
Class J2_iZAi£a 
Book_J2-^^I- 



Gopyriglit)^?. 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSrr. 



The Outside of the Cup 

A RESPONSE TO 
WINSTON CHURCHILL'S 

"The Inside of the Cup" 



BY 

REV. HENRY R. ROSE, B. D. 

CHURCH OF THE REDEEMER 
NEWARK, N. J. 

Author of * 'Twentieth Century Christianity** 



PUBLISHED BY 

THE OMONOIA SOCIETY 

OF 

the church of the redeemer 
newark, n. j. 






Copyright 19U 
HENRY R. ROSE 



M/IR 16/9/4 






'Oci,A369445 



Dedicated to 
MR. WINSTON CHURCHILL 



V 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. John Hodder. The Minister Who Woke Up 9-20 

II. E1.DON Parr. Mammon Running the 

Church 21-31 

III. Kate Marcy. The Church and the Outcast 32-44 

IV. Mrs. C0NSTABI.E. The Churchwoman Who 

Believed in Divorce 45-57 

V. A1.1SON Parr. The Modern Woman in 

Revolt 58-69 

VI. WAI.US PuMPTON. Churchman Defender 

of Ruthless Business 70-81 

VII. Horace Benti^ey. The Man Who Was a 

Continual Christmas 82-93 

VIII. What, then, is Christianity? 94-106 



VI 



PREFACE 




ESUS meant by "The Outside of the 
Cup" the world outside of the church. 
Mr. Winston Churchill in his epoch- 
making book "The Inside of the Cup" 
endeavors to show that the world 
outside of the church will never be 
what it ought to be until the Chris- 
tian Church changes its theology and makes it rational, 
and until it can get its members to put Christianity 
into practise as Jesus practised it. Mr. Churchill, un- 
like most critics of the Church, does not try to destroy 
the Church but to save it. And yet there has been a 
terrific storm of criticism rained down upon his head 
by those who should have risen up and thanked him 
for opening their eyes and showing them their duty. 

This volume is from a minister who feels that Mr. 
Churchill is right and would have his congregation and 
other congregations see how thoroughly right he is. It 
takes up some of the biggest questions discussed in 
"The Inside of the Cup" and treats them more exten- 
sively in chapters by themselves, so that the earnest 
reader may consider one subject at a time, in all of its 
modern bearings. 

The writer does not agree with Mr. Churchill in 
everything; but there is so much in this great novel 
with which he does agree and with which every Twen- 
tieth Century preacher should agree, that he rejoices 
it has been given to the world ; and he believes before 
its influence is spent, "The Inside of the Cup" — the 
Church — will be radically altered for the better, and, 
as a result, "The Outside of the Cup"— the World- 
will be vastly and beautifully improved. 



VII 



CHAPTER I. 

JOHN HODDER 
The Minister Who Woke Up* 

The hero of the story is John Hodder, an unmarried 
Episcopal rector, who is called from a delightful subur- 
ban church to a rich and fashionable parish in a large 
city. Its vestrymen want a rector who will preach the 
good old orthodoxy and attend to the altar in the most 
conservative fashion. They want to keep St. John's 
what it has always been, — eminently respectable and 
thoroughly conventional: a kind of Sunday Club for 
the well-to-do and the socially prominent people of the 
diocese. But the new rector proves to be a young man 
with red blood in his veins and a growing mind, and 
he does not stay put. Some of his most valued par- 
ishioners tell him frankly that they do not believe his 
conservative doctrines and cannot understand how he 
continues to believe them. This sets him to thinking. 
Then he discovers that certain of his members, even 
men on his vestry, are doing things in the world of 
business and in other relations that are utterly dis- 
honest and heartless. This makes him think all the 
harder. Finally he wakes up, and says to himself: 
''This church of mine is going to the dogs, and so 
are other churches. Something must be done and that 
right early or there will not be any church." The 
book is the story of his awakening and of what happens 
as he wakes and after he wakes. 

John Hodder wakes up to the two vital problems now 
confronting the church. First, how it is to continue 
to exist. Second, how it is to become a real and 
mighty force in this conscientious, exacting and unfool- 
able Twentieth Century. 



^Matt. 23, 25. Thou blind Pharisee, cleanse first the inside of the cup 
and of the platter that the outside thereof may be 
clean also. 



10 JOHN HODDER 

He sees the pews emptying. What is the reason? 
What will stop the exodus and start the tide back into 
the church again? 

He finds a cause that astonishes him. Some of his 
people do not want the pews filled! St. John's rich 
and fashionable constituency does not care to have 
anybody and everybody attend its services. H he 
begins to bring in the middle class or the poor, these 
people will leave. 

He also discovers another explanation in the people 
who will not go to his church or any church. Their 
number is appalling, probably fifty million in our popu- 
lation of one hundred million. One-half the citizens 
of the United States outside of all churches. And yet 
the church is the greatest prop and hope of Democracy I 

What is the trouble? 

Not poor preaching entirely. At any rate, not in 
his case, as he is a fine speaker. 

Not because the good old-fashioned gospel is not 
preached. He preaches nothing but the most rigid 
orthodoxy. And yet his pews are not filled, nor does 
he succeed in interesting the people in his parish he 
most longs to reach: the most thoughtful and most 
conscientious members of his congregation. 

It dawns upon him that two things are standing in 
the way of the true prosperity and influence of his 
church and of every church. 

First, its theology is out of date. The views he 
cherishes most and preaches with agony and eloquence 
are as dead and foreign to the average man and woman 
of to-day as if he were using a dead language. He is 
visiting the Fergusons when a young man, who used 
to attend his church, tells him frankly that he has quit 
because he no longer believes in hell-fire and such doc- 
trines. At another time one of his most intelligent 
women quite as frankly informs him that she can take 
no stock in the old theology and wonders why he keeps 
on preaching it. Thus it grows upon him that a part 
of the explanation of empty pews is an outgrown 
theology. The pulpit has no creed acceptable to the 



THE MINISTER WHO WOKE UP 11 

present century. 

The other explanation is that the church is not 
touching humanity. It is not doing the work for the 
people that they have a right to expect it to do and, 
therefore, they have no use for it. They feel no warm 
and vital connection between it and themselves. His 
acquaintance with Alison Parr, Kate Marcy, the 
Garvins and Horace Bentley drives this truth home. 
These people and thousands like them are entirely 
outside the church. Yet they need the church and the 
church needs them. 

John Hodder sees that these two things must be 
remedied before the church can right itself and not be 
shipwrecked. 

On the one hand, it must yield to the theological 
demands of the age. Church leaders do not determine 
the theology the world needs. It is determined by the 
independents inside and outside the pulpits and pews 
v/ho keep in touch with the age, just as political bosses 
do not determine the political platforms of their parties 
any longer, but must accept the platforms prepared for 
them by the progressive members of their parties. 
Forward-looking thinkers, writers and preachers within 
and without the church have been undermining its doc- 
trines for years because they were capable of being 
undermined, and now that they are about to fall, the 
church must stand from under or go down with the 
crash! For instance, the three writers who have had 
the most subtle and powerful influence upon the 
thinking of this age are Emerson, Tennyson and 
Browning. Not one of them teaches the old ortho- 
doxy. The millions who have absorbed and are 
absorbing these thinkers can no longer entertain the 
doctrines their fathers did in the days gone by. Some- 
thing must be done. 

John Hodder says : "One thing I perceive. The age 
calls for new contents to some of the doctrines. This 
will I give it." It is not easy to give the familiar 
phrases of religion a different meaning, but it is a good 
thing to attempt, as most of the old theological terms 



12 JOHN HODDER 

stand for something really vital when taken spiritually 
and not traditionally. It will do the reader good to 
read from page 284 to 290 of **The Inside of 
the Cup/'* 

Here are some of the new definitions he gives. I do 
not state them in his own words, but give his thought. 

"The Inspiration of the Bible." Not a book dictated, 
word for word, from on High; but the product of 
personal inspiration, — men and women listening to the 
inner voice of God and recording what they heard. 
Some parts more beautiful and more trustworthy than 
others because the persons were more spiritual and 
could hear divine things better than others. Inspira- 
tion did not stop with the Apostles. It still goes on in 
men and women of sincere spirituality. 

"The Unpardonable Sin.'' Not some specific sin 
which no man has ever been able to discover ; but that 
attitude which denies that the spirit of God is just as 
truly at work in this age as in Christ's time, and that 
wilfulness which resists the appeal of God's spirit to 
one's own spirit and conscience. 

"The New Birth." Not that we are depraved at 
birth and the children of the devil in need of being 
reborn the children of God ; but that we are more or 
less spiritually blind, spiritually ignorant, spiritually 
unsensitive, and need to have our spiritual eyes 
opened, our spiritual sensitiveness quickened, and our 
divine powers developed. That is a new birth indeed ! 

"Baptism." Not a sacrament that makes a man a 
Christian, as if any external rite could change us inter- 
nally; but an outward expression of what should be 
an inward consecration and aspiration, — the dedication 
of a man to Christ's way of living. Baptism with 
water, he says, is not enough. It must be of the 
Spirit, too, and more Spirit than water. 

What is "Heaven"? Not a place hereafter, but a 
state of soul which may begin on earth and continue 



* The figures throughout this book refer to pages in "The 
Inside of the Cup." 



THE MINISTER WHO WOKE UP 13 

hereafter. He should have known this all his ministry, 
for Jesus distinctly said: "The Kingdom of Heaven 
is within you." 

''Hell?" Not a place hereafter, but a state of soul 
here and hereafter, of disharmony with God ; a condi- 
tion that will last until man makes up his mind to get 
out of it. Such a decision will always be possible, in 
the next world as it is in this. 

What is "Salvation?" Not rescue from a devil, but 
deliverance from disharmony with God or good, and 
devotion to the service of humanity and the joy and 
development that comes from such service. 

How explain the "Trinity?" He doesn't believe 
those who say "The Father is God, the Son is God, and 
the Holy Ghost is God. And yet they are not three 
Gods, but one God." He departs from this form of 
tritheism entirely and stands for a new definition of the 
Trinity, one that will make it acceptable to the 
Unitarian as well as the Trinitarian, and thus pave the 
way for a reunited Christendom. His Trinity is this : 
"God the Father is God manifested as the universe. 
God the Son is God manifesting himself as Personality 
in Man. God the Holy Spirit is God ever working 
upon the souls of men to transform, inspire and drive 
them spiritually." Jesus was not God; but was filled 
completely with the spirit of God and was a perfect 
exemplification of the Personal qualities of God. We 
know that Jesus was closer to the Father than any 
Son who has ever appeared on the earth, because he 
alone, of all men, was able to fathom God's purpose 
to bless humanity to the uttermost, and able to grasp 
clearly the truth that the supreme duty of man is the 
service of mankind. The parables reveal this deep 
insight of Jesus, especially those of the talents and 
the prodigal son. (284) (364) This is about the only 
way to define this fundamental doctrine of Christianity 
if the age is to keep the name Trinity and have it mean 
something vital and useful in its thought and life. 

But John Hodder finds it necessary to go further 
than change the meaning of these statements of faith. 



14 JOHN HODDER 

He must reject some doctrines entirely, even though 
time-honored and very precious to many souls. 

One is that of "Apostolic Succession." It is very 
sacred and central to the Greek Catholic Church, the 
Roman Catholic Church and one party in the Protestant 
Episcopal Church. But he abandons it altogether. 
By the way, this doctrine makes these churches call 
each other and all the denominations interlopers and 
heterodox. They regard the Presbyterian, Methodist, 
Baptist, Congregationalist, Reformed and Lutheran 
churches just as truly heterodox in this respect as the 
Unitarians, Universalists and Christian Scientists. But 
the rector shows that when Simon of Samaria wanted 
Simon Peter to confer upon him mechanical apostolic 
power which he could transmit to a succession of 
followers and to them alone, Peter rebuked him, say- 
ing it was not his to give. (Acts viii, 19.) "The true 
successors to the Apostles," as the book says, "must be 
Apostles themselves, must have the spirit of an Apostle, 
and live the life of an Apostle." 

The "Virgin Birth" is another dogma he rejects. He 
calls it a myth (287) and explains how it came to be 
believed by Christian people. When Christianity was 
first carried to the ignorant masses of the Roman 
Empire they were believers in nature miracles, and it 
was easier for them to believe that Christ's unique 
divinity was due to actual, physical generation of the 
Spirit than to get them to understand the theory of the 
incarnation as put forth in the terms of Greek phi- 
losophy. (286) So they were taught that Jesus was 
miraculously born of a virgin. Later on, however, 
there grew up a cult that held that he was not born 
at all, but came straight down from heaven, super- 
natural in every respect. The church had to stamp 
out this error and make sure that its communicants 
would ever afterwards believe that he was actually 
born of woman and was human, as well as divine, so it 
wrote in the Nicene Creed: "Incarnate by the Holy 
Ghost of the Virgin Mary." (286) But reasoning 
people of to-day can only believe tha,t Jesus was born 



THE MINISTER WHO WOKE UP IS 

like all children. Indeed, his mother implied as much 
when she said to her boy on the day he got separated 
from them in the Temple: "Thy father and I have 
sought thee sorrowing." Would she have spoken thus 
if she knew that Joseph was not his father? Paul 
wrote to the Romans: "Concerning his son Jesus 
Christ, our Lord, which was made of the seed of David, 
according to the flesh. And declared to be the Son 
of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness." 
John Hodder holds that it is necessary to get rid of the 
doctrine of the virgin birth before the orthodox church 
to which he belongs can or will come on to the new 
doctrinal basis demanded by the Twentieth Century, 
for around this dogma revolves the whole system of 
supernatural theology called evangelical orthodoxy. 

In fact, our preacher reaches the conclusion that he 
must give the church a new theology from the ground 
up, based upon modern science, modern philosophy 
and a modern interpretation of the Bible and reli.s^ion. 
He says to his assistant, McCrae : "I no longer believe 
in the external and imposed authority of the Church — 
nor in the virgin birth, nor in certain other dogmas in 
which I once acquiesced. I am convinced that not one 
man or woman in ten thousand who has rejected 
Christianity ever knew what Christianity is. The 
science and archaic philosophy in which Christianity 
has been swaddled and hampered is discredited, and 
the conclusion is drawn that Christianity itself must 
be discredited." (324) It is his duty to preach liberal 
orthodoxy, as there is no other way to get the educated 
and thoughtful classes back to church and no other 
viewpoint that will wake the church and make it 
tackle the social problems of the age. 

So long as religion is regarded as a form of life 
insurance for one's self, and the church is looked upon 
as a kind of shelf on which the redeemed are placed, 
awaiting their turn to enter paradise, how can it ever 
be brought to take a living hand in making this world 
a livable world for the millions who are not on the 
same delectable shelf or in possession of the same 



16 JOHN HODDER 

insurance policy? 

This line of thinking brings him face to face with 
the sociological conditions of the time and the duty of 
the church toward them. When you get a livable 
theology it commands you to practise it or quit and 
acknowledge yourself a coward. Hence the book also 
takes up and discusses the church's duty toward the 
awful and complicated problems of our civilization ; a 
discussion to be opened up fully and freely in the 
chapters that follow. John Hodder struggles to get 
at the root causes and root cures of the ills that afHict 
us and the evils that appall us, as we ought to do. 

Here is the White Slave problem. Not what is the 
city going to do about it or the social workers, but 
what is the church going to do about it? It must 
understand that church members are sometimes respon- 
sible for the traffic, before it can successfully undertake 
its destruction. 

Here is Divorce. Why is there such a thing in our 
Christian civiHzation? Is the church just and wise in 
refusing to allow it under any circumstances ? 

Here is Marriage. It is so often an unholy contract, 
because entered into for other reasons than love, when 
it ought to be the divinest union on earth and would be 
if the church exerted the influence it might. 

Here, too, is Poverty. Much of it flows directly 
from the unchristian treatment of help by employers, 
some of whom are the very pillars of the church. 

And Ruthless Business. Its maxim is "every man 
for himself and the devil take the hindmost" ; and yet 
it is championed and defended even by those who arc 
members of a vestry and for a pretense make long 
prayers. 

He comes in closest possible contact with the whole 
Woman Movement of our time through his relations 
with Alison Parr, the rich young woman who 
renounces her father's wealth and home that she may 
work out her life as an independent woman. 

And he comes face to face with Socialism, discov- 
ering for the first time why such a revolt is natural^ 



THE MINISTER WHO WOKE UP 17 

and also seeing that it would never have come about 
if Christianity had been put into practise as Christ 
preached it. 

And so this aroused and enfranchised preacher 
wakes up to the fact that he is living in a real world, 
with real problems, and that there are real men and 
women who are determined to settle those problems 
with the aid of the church, if they can get that aid, or 
without the aid, if God himself cannot wake the church 
out of its criminal sleep. 

The final thing that John Hodder sees clearly is his 
personal duty as a minister. He knows that one man 
cannot do everything, but he arrives at certain decisions 
worthy of him and of every minister of the Lord Jesus 
Christ, who was fearless enough to denounce the 
religious leaders of his own day by saying: '*Woe unto 
you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites: for ye make 
clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but 
within you are full of extortion and excess; cleanse 
first the inside of the cup that the outside thereof may 
be clean." And who could express his yearning love 
for the people, by crying: *'0 Jerusalem, Jerusalem, 
thou that killest the prophets and stonest them which 
are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered 
thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her 
chickens under her wings, but ye would not. Behold 
your house is left desolate. For I say unto you, Ye 
shall not see me henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed 
is he that cometh in the name of the Lord." 

He resolves to be honest with himself and his people. 
He will tell them exactly what he believes and intends 
to do; tell it from the pulpit and also in their homes 
and to their very face. How easy that sounds. But 
it will require the struggle of his life, as the same kind 
of a decision cost Christ the struggle of his life. It is 
no easy thing to change one's whole religious faith; 
fling one's cherished beliefs into the crucible and see 
them melt into thin air. John Hodder almost goes 
to pieces in doing it, like many another preacher. He 
nearly loses his faith in God, humanity and himself. 



18 JOHN HODDER 

Everything for a time seems slipping from under him, 
even conscience and all moral scruples. That is why 
we find him in his most desperate hour in the saloon 
where he meets Kate Marcy and acts for a time as if 
he were going to hell. 

Then he resolves, and this is the grandest thing about 
John Hodder, that he will be a stayer and not a quitter ; 
that he will not desert the church but change the 
church. Robert Elsmere went through a similar ex- 
perience, and quit the church. John Hodder refuses 
to quit. And therein lies his infinite superiority to 
Robert Elsmere and every other minister who runs 
away. Hodder started to run, I admit. 

He goes into his church to take a last farewell, but 
there before him hangs a painting of Christ on Cal- 
vary. As he sits staring at the face of the Man on 
the cross, it seems to move and live ; it seems to come 
across the centuries and to show that in the hardest 
and darkest hour of Christ's Hfe there was no weak- 
ness in his face (144) no suggestion of quitting his 
task or abandoning his hope. John Hodder staggers 
to his feet and goes back to his job ! 

But it entails opposition, as we shall see, and deser- 
tion, and malevolence and martyrdom. Vested inter- 
ests and religious bigots join hands to squelch him; 
many who have walked with him walk with him no 
more ; some call him Unitarian and others call him 
SociaHst, laboring to prejudice him in the eyes of the 
bigoted or of those who have vested privileges at 
stake. When the vestry cannot overcome him in any 
other way, it seeks to drive him away by cutting off 
his salary, and starving him out. But he stands his 
ground and wins ! 

To his surprise and joy, now that he has come out 
boldly, unequivocally and completely for the new 
theology and the new duty of the church to society, he 
finds that the Bishop of his diocese is cheeringly on 
his side, saying that if he were a younger man he 
would be doing the same thing and fighting the same 
fight. He finds that some of the very finest people he 



THK MINISTER WHO WOKE UP 19 

ever met are coming into his church to hold up his 
hands. And, joy of joys, he discovers that the plain 
people are filling his pews as if they had been waiting 
for years for a minister and a congregation really, truly 
and sweetly on fire with the passion of Christ. He 
preaches a wonderful sermon, and Alison tells him he 
begins to look young again, as if the eternal youthful- 
ness of Christianity had possessed his soul. 

The story is meant of course to be a prophecy of 
what will happen, not when one church and one min- 
ister does what St. John's and John Hodder did^ — 
for no such prosperity will come to one church doing 
this thing alone ; it is not big enough and strong enough 
to overcome the growing public prejudice and hostility 
to churches in general — it is a prophecy of what will 
take place w^hen all the churches and all the ministers 
come round to the theology and to the humanity that 
St. John's and John Hodder did. When that time 
comes, and thank God it is surely approaching, we are 
going to have very different churches from what we 
have to-day and they are going to occupy a very dif- 
ferent position in the world, which is now sneering at 
them and passing them by. We are going to have a 
pulpit whose utterances will have at least as much room 
in the daily press one day of the week as sporting news 
and political news get every day. We are going to 
have preaching so full of human interest and uplift 
that to come to church will be the heavenliest experi- 
ence on earth. And we are going to have men and 
women going from church into business, politics, 
pastimes, their homes and every affair of life with none 
other than the gentle, loving, helpful spirit of Jesus 
Christ, bearing and forbearing, each for the good of 
all and all for the blessing of each. Isn't it a wonder- 
ful, a glorious, a stimulating picture? and it is all in 
this splendid book and that still more remarkable book 
the Bible! whose spirit runs through it like pearls 
through golden sands and whose millenial dream has 
captivated the author as it ought to captivate you 
and me. 



20 JOHN HODDER 

And so the author says, now that John Hodder and 
his church have awakened: "The church might be 
likened to a ship saiHng out of the snug harbor in 
which she has lain so long, to range herself gallantly 
beside those whom she has formerly beheld, with com- 
placent cowardice, fighting her fight; young men and 
women enlisted under other banners than her own, 
doing their part in the battle of the Twentieth Century 
for humanity. Her rector is her captain. It is he 
who has cut her cables, quelled, for a time at least, her 
mutineers and seeks to hearten those of her crew who 
waver, who shrink back appalled as they realize some- 
thing of the immensity of the conflict in which her 
destiny has to be wrought out." (428). 



CHAPTER IL 

ELDON PARR 
Mammon Rumiing the Church^ 

The two antagonistic characters in "The Inside of 
the Cup" arc John Hodder, the minister, and Eldon 
Parr, the vestryman. It is a mistake, however, to 
suppose that in dealing with Eldon Parr the author 
is dealing simply with an individual. He is presenting 
a representative of a class. In other words, he is per- 
sonating Mammon, and also personifying the Pharisee. 
Notice the ingenious play on words in the name of 
Eldon Parr. Eld means old. Par is a word used in 
financial circles in connection with stocks and bonds. 
It suggests money. **Eldon Parr" then might well mean 
"Old Money" or "Old Mammon." Or, if we pro- 
nounced the last name a little differently, we have a 
play upon the word Pharisee. Phar, the first four 
letters of Pharisee, might easily be changed into Parr, 
and by calling him "Eldon Parr" we would have the 
idea of "Old Pharisee." So that he stands for a 
hypocritical type, as old as the foundation of society; 
as ancient as the beginning of religion. 

John Hodder tells his assistant Mac Crae that it is 
his determination to do three things. First, preach 
liberal orthodoxy. (324) Second, discourage the 
charity that is a mockery of Christianity. (324) Third, 
free the church of its Pharisees. (324) We saw in the 
first chapter how magnificently he changed his faith 
and brought it into harmony with modern science and 
recent Biblical interpretation and then went into his 
pulpit and preached it. We shall see in the next chapter 
how he discouraged the charity that is a mockery of 
Christianity. Now, we go with him as he enters upon 
the struggle to free the church of its Pharisees. 



*Matt. VI., 24. Ye cannot serve God and Mammon. 



22 EU)ON PARR 

He undertakes the big job of the century. The 
author shows his grasp of the condition confronting 
the church in this new era when he practically says: 
**It must get rid of the Pharisee or die." John Hodder, 
as he looks about him, finds that civilization is at fault ; 
that it is conducted on the materialistic theory of the 
survival of the fittest rather than the brotherhood of 
man. (322) He also finds that those in the church 
are too full of the materialistic spirit of our civilization 
and too little of the spirit of Christ. Worse than that, 
some of them and even the most prominent and in- 
fluential of them, are using the church to bulwark the 
privileges they have gained at the expense of their 
fellow men. (322) These are the modern Pharisees; 
the present day children of Mammon, who neither go 
into heaven themselves nor suffer others to go in. In- 
deed, it grows upon him, as it does upon every observ- 
ing man, that while we have to a great extent Christian- 
ized the home, the school and the state, we have not 
Christianized industry and commerce. The business 
world is on a heathen and even savage basis, the strong 
battling with the weak and the shrewd and unscrupu- 
lous gathering in the spoils. If war is hell; business 
is war and hell combined, especially for the men who 
are being ground between the upper and nether mill- 
stones. 

John Hodder resolves not to attempt to do what the 
average preacher has always tried to do: keep the 
individual a Christian within an unchristian industrial 
and commercial world only to miserably fail. It is 
impossible — utterly impossible — for a man to serve 
both God and Mammon. In business, most workers 
find it necessary, as business is now constituted, to 
serve Mammon much of the time and God very seldom. 

His eflFort will be to Christianize the industrial and 
commercial worlds and bring them into harmony with 
the ideals, principles and spirit of the home, school 
and state, so that a man may be a Christian and live a 
Christian in manufacturing and trade as naturally as 
he may be a Christian and live a Christian in his home 



MAMMON RUNNING THE CHURCH 23 

or school or commonwealth. It is to be a fight against 
the detestable spirit of greed, this lust for money and 
power which is creeping over our country, corrupting 
our people and institutions and finally tainting the 
church itself. 

To accomplish his object he must begin in the church 
itself, and utterly eliminate Eldon Parr and his class. 
They are in the church for personal advantage. As 
Phil Goodrich exclaims : "In St. John's, we have the 
sublime spectacle of Eldon Parr, the Pharisee in chief, 
conducting the Church of Christ," who uttered the 
denunciation against the scribes and Pharisees, hypo- 
crites, telling them to make the inside of the church 
clean so that the outside might be clean indeed. 

Who is Eldon Parr? 

Not a rich man merely. The book is no attack on 
wealth as such, although it pleads with Christian people 
to prepare the way for reducing private property to 
the minimum as soon as the time is ready. Jesus had 
friends among the rich as well as the poor and never 
condemned wealth for its own sake. 

Eldon Parr is an unscrupulous rich man. He plays 
the game of business and finance for money and resorts 
to every trick. Honor has no place in his code. Mercy 
has no seat in his bosom. Pity is something to which 
he is a stranger. Sincerity is utterly lacking in his 
constitution. 

He is in the church for what he can get out of it. 
On the one hand, by influencing it to keep quiet about 
his methods of doing business and thus enable him 
to continue his dishonesty under cover of religious 
sanction. On the other hand, by making money out 
of the people who attend church and give it to him to 
invest because of their faith in him. 

To use the church successfully he must pull the wool 
over the eyes of the congregation and minister and 
dominate the whole situation. Mammon understands 
full well that to further its unscrupulous ends it must 
muzzle the church, so it buys up congregations by 
being generous with them or it buys up the ecclesi- 



24 EI.DON PARR 

astical authorities by being liberal with them. Eldon 
Parr has succeeded in doing this in the past; but he 
cannot do it with the new rector. 

John Hodder finds him out quite unintentionally but 
very effectually. He discovers that he is not a man of 
integrity, or conscience, or clean standing in the busi- 
ness world, in spite of his high position and immense 
influence. He learns that he has ruined Garvin by 
selling him worthless stock ; has made Horace Bentley 
penniless in the same manner, and has choked all that 
was best out of the nature of Everett Constable, his 
business tool. He perceives that he was the man who 
really drove Kate Marcy into prostitution. Facts 
come to light which show that he is an owner of prop- 
erty in the red light district. This is the sort of man 
who is running a church of God ! Nor is he alone in 
his hyprocrisy, nor is St. John's the only church with 
such men at the helm. Phil Goodrich says: **It's 
typical. The biggest Baptist church on the Boulevard 
is run by old Sedges, as canny a rascal as you can find 
in the state. The inside of his cup has never been 
touched, though he was once immersed in the Missis- 
sippi, they say, and swallowed a lot of water.'' (302) 
Now while it is true that very few churches have 
such a rank vestry as St. John's, it is nevertheless 
true that thousands of churches are run from the 
vestry or pews and not from the pulpit, a thing that 
ever tends to put them in the hands of fashion or the 
commercial spirit rather than under the leadership of 
God. 

John Hodder finds that Eldon Parr is not a man of 
progressive thought in religion. He insists on the 
old theology because it is not a "live-it-theology" and 
will not entail any radical change is his life. 

He also sees that he does not want anything done 
about the application of Christian principles to manu- 
facturing and trade because such principles will break 
up his chance to beat out his rival capitalists and 
exploit the workers. He is perfectly willing to give 
every poultice to the sores of society he can. He tells 



MAMMON RUNNING THE CHURCH 25 

his rector that he will donate all the money he wants 
for a settlement house. He wants it to be the best in 
the country. He has in mind a system to be carried 
out, with the consent and aid of the municipal govern- 
ment, of play grounds, baths, parks, places of recrea- 
tion, and hospitals, for the benefit of the people, which 
will put their city in the very forefront, as he calls it, 
of progress. (334) Yes, he is ready to do anything 
that will divert the thought of the people from the way 
he is making his money and from what humanity 
really needs, which is social justice ; and from the real 
demand of Christ, which is Christian living. Every- 
thing for the symptoms ; nothing for the cause. That 
is Eldon Parr, and that is Mammonism and Pharisee- 
ism. It involves the old, old fight between God and 
gold ; manhood and money ; idealism and materialism. 

The minister goes up against it without fear and 
without compromise. He must fight for the Christian- 
ization of business, industry and finance. These are 
the last stands of the enemies of society and Christian- 
ity. If the church cannot win here, it is lost. 

Mammon understands the battle and it tempts him, 
as evil tempted Jesus of old. It puts certain questions 
to Hodder which it is putting to every minister and 
every congregation, and he replies as every preacher 
and congregation ought to reply. 

First, will you not preach my theology? "No! be- 
cause it is impossible of belief or acceptance in this 
age. It is monarchical and superstitious in origin and 
form: The age demands a democratic and scientific 
theology. We must have a religion on the side of the 
people as a whole, and not on the side of a class." 

Second, will you not take my view of the church: 
that it is a governor on the social engine? (82) that 
it is here to regulate society in the interest of the 
ruling class ? "No ! the church should be the steam in 
the boiler, the electricity from the dynamo, the power 
in society to drive it ahead to all the goals God had in 
view when he started man on this earth." 

Third, will you not accept my theory with respect 



26 EUX)N PARR 

to human nature, that "We cannot change human 
nature, but we can better conditions by wise giving?" 
(344) *'No! we can change human nature because at 
bottom it is divine nature. (498) It has been always 
changing and improving, so that the savage of yes- 
terday has become the barbarian of to-day and the 
barbarian of to-day is becoming the civihan of to- 
morrow and the civilian of to-morrow must become 
the Christian of every day." Hodder lays it down as 
his positive conviction that the ills of life can be 
cured, which means that human nature can be regen- 
erated, when Christian people deal with people in a 
Christian fashion. (361) He confesses that for a 
long time he had been blind to the truth and had taken 
the inherited, unchristian view that the disease which 
causes vice and poverty cannot be cured, though its 
ulcers might be alleviated. (361) But now he be- 
lieves the disease itself curable and all mankind im- 
provable and redeemable. 

Fourth, will you not adopt my theory with respect 
to the church and the lower classes ? that the churches 
are run to make the lower classes contented with their 
lot? Mammon says: ''If you reject this view, there 
are very few of the privileged classes who will invest 
a dollar in the church hereafter." (407) ''No!" 
replies Hodder, "I will not adopt this wretched idea, 
because Christ, of all men, came to make the lower 
classes the higher classes, to lift men up and ever up, 
and to do it by making them divinely and mightily and 
eternally discontented to remain low and under. Did 
he not say: 'Be ye perfect as your father in heaven 
is perfect'? Did he not inspire them to spiritual, 
mental and moral revolution by saying: 'Ye shall 
know the truth and the truth shall make you free' " ? 

Then Mammon puts the final question of all, the 
one it expects will stagger him and bring a weak re- 
ply: "Will you not accept my money? You must 
have it to run your church. Will you not take it?" 
The ministry as a whole and congregations everywhere 
have answered yes: we will take your ill-gotten gold 



MAMMON RUNNING THE CHURCH 27 

and make reparation for you by turning it to good 
uses. Go on with your saloons and breweries, your 
brothels and tricks of trade and cruelties of business: 
we cannot stop you ; you are too powerful for us ; but 
just divert some of your gold our way and we will 
use it to run the ambulance and care for the wounded 
and dying you create/' But the difficulty is that when 
you take the money of highwaymen, they want to 
come and sit in your pews along with the decent peo- 
ple, and they naturally begin to make highwaymen in 
spirit out of your people in order that they themselves 
may feel thoroughly comfortable in your church be- 
cause everybody else is more or less in the same saddle. 
In other words, by compromising with Mammon the 
church gains money ; but it loses its independence and 
integrity. John Hodder sees this and he rises to a 
new height and says : "I don't want your money and 
I wont take your money, except on one condition: 
that you, like Zaccheus of old, take pains to restore 
every dishonest and dishonorable penny to its rightful 
owner. You are to show by your acts that you are a 
changed man and mean to be a sincere man, or I don't 
want you or your money in my church." Eldon Parr 
asks him how he can ever make such restoration, and 
Hodder suggests that he select a board of men in 
whom he has confidence — a court of claims, so to 
speak, — to discover and pass upon all cases where he 
has not gotten his money properly or treated a human 
being on the square and thus make restoration or 
reparation. (495) Winston Churchill is impractica- 
ble in such a proposition. The far better way is to 
let a man henceforth devote his money to doing good. 
Hodder's general position is a radical one for the 
church to take; but, the more we reflect upon it, the 
more we will see that it is the only stand for it to take 
if it would appeal to the consciences of conscientious 
people and rid itself of those who are using it to cloak 
their unscrupulous lives, and thus dragging it down 
to doom., along with themselves. For as sure as there 
is a God in heaven this sort of living is doomed ! The 



28 EU>ON PARR 

new conscience that is being bom in this generation 
will have absolutely nothing to do with the old meth- 
ods of making money. Even Parr's daughter finally 
refuses to receive or inherit his money because it has 
not been honestly made. (488) It is a prophecy of 
the new order when conscientious scruples and prin- 
ciples will be mightier than gold. 

The reply, then, of John Hodder to every question 
put by Eldon Parr, that is, by Mammon and Pharisee- 
ism, is : No, no, no ! The axe is laid at the root of the 
tree. **Eldon Parr, you must either give up your theo- 
ries and practises or get out of the church. No com- 
promise any longer. The time has arrived for the 
church of Christ to take a stand. A new generation 
has come ; and a new civilization is coming to back up 
that stand. I want to save your soul, if I can (338) 
but failing that, I mean to save the soul of my church 
and of my religion. I cannot afford to have such peo* 
pie as you in my pews, no matter how rich and influ- 
ential you may be." 

Mammon replies, and the leisure class, too, **If you 
will not do what we demand, we will withdraw our 
support, and what will your church do then?" The 
probability of such desertion is the problem every 
preacher and congregation must face if they oppose 
the predatory class and a certain element among the 
leisure class. The question is: ''Can the churches 
stand such desertion? Can churches get along with- 
out the contributions of these people?" It remains to 
be seen. It is a fact, however, that they are not suc- 
ceeding even with the money of such classes. A change 
could hardly be any worse, and I believe it will be a 
thousand times better. 

The result of John Hodder's stand is this: Eldon 
Parr gets out of St. John's church; but he goes to 
another. That is the tragedy of the situation: one 
church is ready to take what another church will not 
have. Not until we can get all churches to agree not 
to receive those another church rejects on moral 
grounds unless evidences of true reformation are 



MAMMON RUNNING THE CHURCH 29 

shown, can such a revolution as John Hodder pro- 
poses be successfully accomplished. The point, how- 
ever, is that Eldon Parr is on the run and not the 
minister; Mammon is fleeing and not God. The fact 
is, Eldon Parr cannot be changed. He must be out- 
grown. It is no more possible for a church to alter an 
old Pharisee or an old hypocrite than it was for Christ. 
Phariseeism, when it gets into the blood, stays in the 
blood. The lust of money when it eats into the soul, 
eats out the man; eats out the woman. There was no 
man left to Eldon Parr. Even with his dead son 
lying before him, for whom he professed affection, he 
did not change. Even with his brilliant daughter 
appealing to him in the radiance of her new found 
faith and the joy of her new born love, he drives her 
from his door and goes back to his gold and his lone- 
liness. Truly has Longfellow said : **Even our cities 
have their graves," and they are not all in the ceme- 
teries, either! Oh, the sad, sad picture of this man 
with everything to live for and make him honest, 
tender and true, simply existing in a great, lonely man- 
sion and crying out in his bitterness: **No one is 
grateful for what I have done!'' His loneliness pre- 
dicts the coming loneliness of all in his class. (463) 
The only hope for such men is after death when they 
drop the old fleshly body for a new sj^iritual body. 

I repeat. Mammon in business cannot be changed, it 
must be outgrown. We have outgrown it in the home. 
Whose home is run for money? In the school. What 
school is run for gain? In the state. What state is 
conducted for profit? We are outgrowing it in art 
and science. And now we must outgrow it in industry 
and commerce, for while they exist to make us a 
living they also exist to make us a life, and what does 
it profit a man if he leads the world of business and 
loses his own best self? 

Another result: The community takes on a new 
aspect. Mammon has been ruling and running the 
church for a thousand years, and see where we are; 
see the awful condition of the outside of the cup as 



30 ELDON PARR 

well as the inside, — the slums, the brothels, the 
saloons, the gambling dens, the opium joints, militar- 
ism, cut-throatism in business, poverty, crime and all 
the rest. Mammon has played its hand and given 
humanity a raw deal. Now Christ is coming into the 
game, and it will be a square deal for all, no more and 
no less ! 

Another outcome is a change in St. John's; in its 
personnel and its spirit. Sincerity in its pews creates 
co-operation, democracy, good will and purpose within 
the church. It engenders respect, appreciation and 
gratitude toward the church outside its walls. Sin- 
cerity in its pulpit makes all the difference in him who 
preaches and in them that hear. The preacher gets 
his message across and his people carry it forth into 
their every-day living. Naturally, the church grows. 
Why should it not grow ? It is the divinest institution 
on earth; the seed plot of every human virtue; the 
last, best hope of man. 

When Eldon Parr, Wallis Plimpton, Ferguson, Gor- 
don Atterbury, Everett Constable, Langmaid and their 
kind go out ; Phil Goodrich, Asa Waring, Alison Parr, 
Bedloe Hubbell, Horace Bentley and their kind — the 
representatives of true learning, true character and 
true helpfulness — come in. The gain is infinitely 
greater than the loss, except financially, and that is 
something that will be taken care of by the people, 
for when they know that their church is sound and 
clean from centre to circumference, and that it is up 
to them to pay the bills, they will do it. With man 
all high and holy things are possible ! 

Shall we turn from the book at this point, saying: 
"The whole picture is exaggerated. Mammon isn't 
trying to run the church. Vestries are not controlled 
by any one man or set of men. Well-to-do people do 
not withdraw their support when the interests in 
which they have money invested are attacked. Min- 
isters are not made to suflfer if they dare think their 
own thoughts in theology and sociology. The church 
is not in a serious condition. This book is not a way 



MAMMON RUNNING THE CHURCH 31 

out or a solution of the problem?'' Friends, no matter 
what we say, facts are facts and, making due deduc- 
tions from the indictment of the book on account of 
the intensity of the preacher and of the author, the 
picture is essentially true and the book puts us on the 
track of the solution. We must give the church en- 
tirely to God and conscience and right or give it up 
altogether. Lincoln said the nation could not remain 
half slave and half free. Neither can the church 
rem_ain half corrupt and half pure ! 

Every business man is surely conscious of one thing 
in this age : he is being swept along by a tide of com- 
mercialism and money-making which is robbing him 
of his true perspective, his true leisure, his true ideals 
and his true self. If this story does nothing more 
than wake him up to his real danger and rip him away 
from his insane pursuit of wealth, it will do him an 
enormous and eternal service. 

"The world is too much with us; late and soon, 
Getting and spending, v/e lay waste our powers: 
Little we see in Nature that is ours. 

Great God ! I'd rather be 
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn, 
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, 
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; 
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea, 
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.** 



CHAPTER III. 

KATE MARCY 

The Church and the Outcast^ 

John Hodder is about to leave his church. He does 
not know for how long. It may be for weeks ; it may 
be forever. He cannot go away without a last look 
and a last prayer in the church he has learned to love. 
It is five o'clock in the afternoon; the setting sun 
sends its wonderful rays through the beautiful memor- 
ial windows, fit accompaniment for the setting of his 
beautiful visions of a life as a minister, perhaps never 
to rise again. But as he turns to go, he hears a woman 
sobbing. He goes to her side and finds that she has 
come into the church to ask God to save her little boy. 
She says, in answer to his questions, *'I used to go to 
church, sir, before we had our troubles — and I just 
came in. It suddenly came over me that God might 
help — ^the doctor can do nothing.'* The minister, 
deeply moved, tells her he will go with her and see 
if anything can be done. He finds the little lad nigh 
unto death through lack of proper medical attendance 
more than anything else. Then he learns the whole 
sad history of the wretched family. The father, once 
prosperous in business, had put his trust absolutely 
in Eldon Parr and invested his money in the Consoli- 
dated Tractions Company, of which Parr was the 
chief financier — a company that Parr knew was un- 
safe — and had lost every penny. They were forced to 
give up their home in a respectable locality and move 
into the slums. The father had grown so bitter and 
brooded so constantly over his troubles that he had 
lost his grip, and they had sunk deeper and deeper in 
poverty and misery until they were at the very bottom, 
with their only child slipping into eternity. The father 



*John VIII., 11. Neither do I condemn thee. Go and sin no more. 



THK CHURCH AND THE OUTCAST 33 

in his bitterness says to Hodder: "I'd rather have 
him die than have Eldon Parr's minister or any one 
else belonging to him save that boy's life." But he 
pays no attention to his rage. He pities the heart- 
broken mother and sets about at once to secure the 
best doctor in the city. 

Then he goes across the yard to ask b, woman, 
with a concert-hall voice, if she will not stop 
banging on the piano and singing, as it is caus- 
ing the little sufferer to moan and is going through 
the heart of the mother like a knife. Thus he meets 
Kate Marcy, an outcast — one of the thousands of 
human souls adrift on the tide of sin in these pitiless 
cities of ours. But she has a heart, in spite of her 
shame. She closes the piano softly and asks him if 
there is anything she can do for her neighbor. Before 
he leaves he gets an inkling of her history, and finds 
that in some way she is where she is because of Eldon 
Parr. She says : "You want to stop me from going 
down hill. Give me religion, I suppose? Religion's 
all right for those on top; but say, it would be a joke 
if I got it. There aint any danger. But if I did, it 
wouldn't pay room rent and board. It's all over in a 
little while, anyway. I guess you'll tell me there is a 
hell. But if that's so, some of your church folk'll 
broil, too. I'll take my chance, if they will." (182) 
Later on he learns her full story. The son of Eldon 
Parr had met her in the park and they fell in love with 
each other. Although she was a working girl, em- 
ployed in a department store, he wanted her to marry 
him. But Eldon Parr would not consent. He had an 
interview with her in which he told her he knew that 
she was a good girl and that she loved his son ; but he 
had a big future planned for his boy and intended 
to have him marry someone as rich as himself and 
could help him realize the great ambitions he had for 
him. (245) The father worked on her feelings so 
that she agreed to give his son up. Then he gave her 
thirty one hundred dollar bills and told her to go 
where his son would never see her again. Heart- 



34 KATE MARCY 

broken and utterly adrift, she went to Chicago and 
there spent her money. She says to John Hodder, 
"I just went clean to hell with that money." (245) 
On learning that young Parr had run away from home 
on account of his father's interference with his mar- 
riage and had taken to drink and dissipation, she came 
back to her old city and became a professional woman 
of shame. She had no one to live for and she didn't 
care how soon it would be all over. 

The minister, touched to the depths of his soul by 
her story, and discerning something good and redeem- 
able within her in spite of her bravado and sin, suc- 
ceeds in getting her to quit her evil life. He takes her 
to the home of Horace Bentley — a true follower of 
Christ if there ever was one. He is a gentle, tender 
man, who lives in the midst of the slums and has his 
door open day and night for anyone he may take in 
and help. They find work for Kate Marcy and she 
begins to rise out of the depths, which shows what 
love and personal aid will do even for those this 
Christian land of ours looks upon as utterly lost. 
Unfortunately she meets young Parr again, now a 
thorough reprobate and drunkard. He drags her back 
into woe once more through her love for him, but 
when he dies in a drunken debauch — a terrible retri- 
bution upon his father — she disappears. Whether she 
destroys herself or goes to some place where she is 
not known and keeps on in the good life we are not 
told. But let us hope that Kate Marcy did not taste 
the better life and know the purer way in vain! 

The author tries to show us in her case one of the 
undoubted causes of white slavery — an interfered with 
love. He also shows what could be done for the out- 
cast if church-going people would interest themselves 
sincerely in their reclamation. 

However, the author completely overlooks a phase 
of the white slave problem which is at once its darkest 
and most menacing aspect to our Republic. He does 
not say a word about the commercialization of vice. 
Kate Marcy is an outcast, but she has her own room 



THE CHURCH AND THE OUTCAST 35 

and is her own master. There are many such; but 
there are thousands in an entirely different class; 
actually and literally white slaves. They are en- 
trapped, bought and sold, kept indoors, made to ply 
their awful trade by night and do the meanest drudg- 
ery by day, given no money or so little as to amount to 
nothing, and then at the end of five years or seven 
years at the longest, they die and are buried some- 
where, anywhere, God knows where; unknown, un- 
wept and unknelled. In this country of ours 50,000 
girls and women disappear every year. They are 
snatched from country homes and city homes, from 
good homes as well as bad homes. The Special Com- 
missioner of the Department of Justice of the United 
States Government for the suppression of the White 
Slave Traders says: ''Their business methods have 
been so developed and perfected that they seem able to 
ensnare almost any woman or girl whom they select 
for their purpose. The idea which prevails among 
many persons is that the victims are simply girls who 
are naturally vicious. This is very far from the real 
truth. The great majority consist of young women 
and girls who have either been led to such lives by 
deception and trickery, or who have been driven to 
them by force and fraud." Now these beasts are 
organized in every state of the land, with agents in 
the cities and towns, and they are at their awful work 
day and night. We cannot meet these devils with 
sermons or novels or personal work alone. We must 
meet organization with organization. 

First, with organized society. This means all decent 
citizens banded together behind laws and measures 
that have been tried and found successful. The Fed- 
eral Government now has a White Slave law. Thank 
God for that! The decent citizens of America have 
made it possible. Every State should have a White 
Slave law, of the most drastic kind, and every decent 
citizen should help to enact it. Every city should have 
a White Slave law and every decent man and woman 
should do something to put it on our books. Organ- 



36 KATE MARCY 

ized society should thrust these houses out of their 
midst completely. Segregation — having a certain sec- 
tion in a city where this thing is legally permitted — is 
now admitted to be a failure and a curse everywhere 
it has been tried. Closing such houses may not elim- 
inate the social evil entirely, but that is no reason 
for not closing them. A city should have a Public 
Welfare Committee, one branch of whose work shall 
be to hurl the best citizenship of the city against this 
traffic in every guise and shape, until it is utterly elim* 
inated and kept eliminated. 

Second, organized religion. Judaism has its syna* 
gogues; Christianity its churches. They stand for 
religion organized. They mean that the individual 
knows that he can do little as an individual against 
the terrific odds of our organized modern world; but 
that he can do everything as a part of a synagogue or 
church aroused. The Jews abroad and at home are 
doing their share. The Christians must do theirs. We 
are grappling with this accursed thing through the 
Young Women's Christian Association, the Young 
Men's Christian Association and the Woman's Chris- 
tian Temperance Union. They are proving three of 
the greatest forces in America for the prevention and 
suppression of vice. The Men and Religion Forward 
Movement has also done some very practical work in 
cities like Atlanta. This is acknowledged by all who 
know the facts. Then there has recently been formed 
the American Vigilance Association under the encour- 
agement of the churches. It is officered by some of 
the strongest men and women of the land, and has 
branches in every part of the country. It is here to 
meet the white slavers at every turn, and has already 
done encouraging things. 

Each church should be an aggressive educator along 
these lines and a constant demander of clean conditions 
in the city, just treatment of the working classes, aboli- 
tion of the saloons, cheap dance halls, low grade plays, 
and all the other things necessary to stamp out this 
evil. We as individual Christians are comparatively 



THE CHURCH AND THE OUTCAST 37 

weak, but massed together in a church federation we 
are powerful, and the hour has come to put forth our 
arm and let our power be felt. 

Third, organized business. Society and the church 
may do much to deliver our land from this frightful 
curse ; but business can do more, simply because it is, 
at bottom, an economic problem. The root cause 
has been discovered to be poor wages and the cold- 
ness, indifference and soullessness with which the 
working people have been treated by those who employ 
them. Jane Addams has said: "I have seen young 
girls lose out in the struggle to live honestly upon 
wages too meager and intermittent to support them.'* 
Think of it, fifty per cent, of the working girls of this 
country earn between five and six dollars a week! 
How are they to keep body and soul alive on that when 
the minimum cost of living, the very lowest at which 
a woman can get along decently, is $8 a week ? Horace 
Bentley says, as a result of his experience with the 
outcasts, that they are driven to it by the wages they 
get. Then he wisely and justly adds : *'But we cannot 
put all the blame on individual firms." (186) It is 
the system that is doing it; the demands of modern 
competition. There are stores where a girl is asked, 
when she says the wages are too small : "Haven't you 
a man friend to support you?" Now it is up to the 
proprietors of our stores, factories and mills to change 
this whole horrible condition by paying a living wage, 
and also by doing friendly and elevating things for 
their employees in connection with their store or fac- 
tory or mill. I am glad to say that this new idea is 
in business to-day and it is steadily spreading. There 
is, for instance, a large department store in Boston, 
owned by French Jews, by birth, where the minimum 
wage is eight dollars a week, and when their profits 
reach a certain amount they divide them with their 
employees. This firm will adopt no rule nor policy 
until it has been submitted to their employees and 
approved by them. It maintains a hospital for its 
workers and rest rooms and recreation for them. 



38 KATie MARCY 

Here in the city of Newark I am glad to say that there 
is a department store that has turned its immense roof 
into a place of recreation for its employees. It em- 
ploys a woman whose sole business is to look after the 
social and personal welfare of its four thousand em- 
ployees. Now the more this thing is done and done 
for the workers where they meet together six days out 
of seven and where it can be done best, the less temp- 
tation there will be for them to take up a life of sin 
or throw away their lives in any fashion whatsoever. 
Business organized on a human basis is bound to cut 
this awful evil in two and help destroy it root 
and branch. 

The home must also be organized. One thing it 
should insist on is that our public schools teach its 
daughters as well as its sons how to work, and to work 
at something that will bring them a decent living if 
they are ever thrown on their own resources. The 
figures show that in sixty cities where the white slaves 
were asked to reveal their history, 4,000 of them told 
the sad story; 500 came from the ranks of garment 
workers, 800 had been milliners, rope-makers, laun- 
dresses, workers in textile mills or shoe factories ; 1 16 
came from department stores. The rest, 2,584 out of 
4,000, had come from homes where they had never 
had anything to do and did not know how to do any- 
thing to earn an honest living. When they were 
thrown out into the world, how easy it was for them 
to succumb to the alluring pictures and lying promises 
of the agents of the underworld ! Father and mother, 
educate your daughters so that they will have some- 
thing to fall back on in the time of need and in the 
hour of temptation. Don't put this duty utf another 
day with these appalling figures before you. 2,584 out 
of this one group of 4,000 living a life of shame be- 
cause they positively did not know how to lift their 
fingers and earn enough honest dollars to keep them 
independent and clean! 

This, then, is the organization of the human forces 
that must be formed to meet the organization of the 



THE CHURCH AND THE OUTCAST 39 

inhuman forces ever striving to reach and ruin our 
girls. Organized society, beating the foe down and 
back with powerful laws strictly enforced; organized 
religion, circumventing the enemy by opening delight- 
ful and uplifting places where young men and women 
can live their full life in a clean way; organized busi- 
ness, preventing lapses into sin by paying right wages 
and looking after the social well being of their em- 
ployees; and an organized home, determined that our 
schools shall prepare every girl and boy to earn their 
living, as well as teach them great essentials of learn- 
ing and culture. When you get all these organizations 
on this basis you will have vice on the run and it 
won't stop running until it has gone over the precipice 
of destruction, where it belongs ! 

But the other side of the situation is also true ; the 
personal side specifically dealt with by "The Inside of 
the Cup." We must not depend too much upon or- 
ganization. It is apt to make us forget or shirk our 
individual responsibility; to let somebody else do it. 
The keynote of the book in this connection is struck 
where the author says that John Hodder discovers *'the 
sublime truth that the world grows better, not through 
automatic soul-saving machinery, but by Personality." 
(260) That is what the church is for; that is what 
preaching is for, — to kindle the individual and set 
him at work. It all depends upon you, as one of the 
members of the church; what you do when you are 
away from church, just as truly as on what your min- 
ister does when he is out of his pulpit. 

We are to take a personal interest in this matter 
and in these outcasts. That is the first thing. And 
yet someone rises up and says : *'I don't want to hear 
anything about such subjects; I don't think they 
ought to be handled in the pulpit." But the preacher 
may quote Paul and his sermons to the Romans and 
Corinthians and show that that great preacher did not 
hesitate to talk about this thing to his people and in 
the plainest possible language. The social evil was 
the curse of Rome and Corinth in those far away days. 



40 KATE MARCY 

Paul would not have been true to his vow as a min- 
ister of Christ and God if he had held his peace. Why 
does anyone want silence in the pulpit? I know why 
the procurers do: it will help them to carry on their 
infernal traffic without interference or protest. I 
know why the owners of property used for red lii^ht 
purposes do — and they are oftentimes churchmen like 
Eldon Parr or church corporations who rent houses for 
this purpose, because of the enormous rentals derived. 
I know, too, that many fine grained church people 
hesitate to have it preached about because the subject 
is so delicate and intimate ; but, friends and brethren, 
we are in a new age and this thing is being talked 
about everywhere — upon the stage, the lecture plat- 
form and in the parlor — with utter frankness, and 
should the pulpit be silent? The one place in God's 
world where the truth, however naked, should be pre- 
sented, and evils, however awful, should be attacked? 
The shame and weakness of the pulpit has been its 
silence on delicate and burning questions until they 
have been taken up and attacked elsewhere. What 
did the pulpit have to say against slavery ? What is 
it saying against drinking and gambling and smoking 
by women? Especially those churches where fashion- 
able people are doing these things and injuring by 
their powerful example the rest of our society in ways 
no language can express? When theatre-going people 
crowd the theatres to hear about this matter and when 
they applaud the sentiment to an echo that this satanic 
business shall be crushed, it is about time that church- 
going people were taking a powerful interest in it and 
asking themselves what they can do, as individuals, 
to fight this battle of the century to a finish. 

Why, every woman who goes to church, as well as 
every woman who doesn't go to church, should be 
aroused as she is over no other matter on earth, be- 
cause it is an evil that is cursing her and her children, 
body and soul. Carlyle tells of the Irish widow with 
three children applying for help in Edinburgh, but no 
one helped. She sank down in typhus fever, died, in- 



THE CHURCH AND THE OUTCAST 41 

fected the alley in which she lived and seventeen other 
persons died of the disease. Carlyle says it was as if 
she had cried : ''Behold, I am sinking ; you must help 
me. I am your sister, bone of your bone, one God 
made us; you must help me.'' They answer: ''No, 
impossible, you are no sister of ours." But she proves 
her sisterhood; her typhus fever kills them; they 
actually were her sisters, while denying it. There is 
not a woman in any church, there is not a woman in 
this land, but is in danger of diseases and consequences 
a thousand times more awful than typhus fever and 
death itself from the Kate Marcy's of the streets and 
the houses of shame. 

They tell us that it is a man's problem — and it 
is; but it is infinitely more a woman's problem, and 
you women will never be sure of your blood and the 
blood of your children; never be sure of your health 
and the health of your offspring ; as long as this ulcer 
is allowed to be an open and contaminating sore in 
our civilization. Interested in it? Why it amazes 
m,e that you can sit still a minute and allow it to go 
on. 

The victims of this awful evil need the personal 
touch of Christian people. That is the lesson of Kate 
Marcy's recovery. She was saved because two or 
three co-operated with each other in saving her. But 
here again we recoil, some of us saying we are afraid 
to come near such women. Oh, they are not lepers ; 
but human souls; sold into sin, it is true; but still 
having the image of God in their souls. It is hard to 
reach them, the experts tell us, but they can be 
reached. We are not all fitted to reach them ; but 
if we have the opportunity — if it is ever put in our 
way to change such a life or encourage such a soul — 
Christ lays it upon us as a solemn duty, a glorious 
privilege, to do it and not to draw away from them 
as if they were not fit to live again in decent company. 
Kate Marcy did not try to make those who were help- 
ing her, like herself; she tried to become as they 
were. This is the discovery made over and over again 



42 KATE MARCY 

by the workers who are down in the depths lifting 
man's victims out of the mire. A woman in Atlanta 
who had kept an evil house for years, when the city 
went out of partnership with the crime — thanks to 
the **Men and Religion Forward Movement'' — came 
to the leaders and said: "Here is $2,500; all the 
money I have in the world. I am through with the 
horrible business and I want to give the money to 
start a Martha's Home for Women and Girls." And 
that same woman took charge of that Martha Home 
and is to-day caring for those the world calls hope- 
lessly lost. I tell you, friends, no woman is ever so 
sunk in sin, as long as she retains her right mind, but 
is still a woman, and God has put us in the world, as 
a part of our duty, to reach the outcast and revive the 
woman in them. Jesus told one such woman to go and 
sin no more, and she obeyed. He talked with the evil 
woman of Samaria and she changed. He comforted 
the remorseful woman who bathed his feet with her 
tears, and she went away with the sense of forgive- 
ness in her heart and the star of hope beckoning her 
on and on. 

The right end of this whole matter is prevention. 
H Eldon Parr had not treated Kate Marcy as he did, 
there would have been one less outcast; and if all 
church-going men and women would refrain in every 
way from wronging other Kate Marcys there would 
be thousands less in the toils of sin. Those who 
cannot do a thing on the other end can do wonders on 
this. In the home, we can grow clean young men 
and chaste young women; young men of the King 
Arthur type who vow to live sweet lives of purest 
chastity: young women of the Mary type who will 
keep their thoughts and feelings virgin and yet know 
all the deep, wonderful meaning of womankind. Out- 
side of our homes, we can pay our workers at least 
a living wage and as much more as the nature of our 
business and its involvements will allow; we can 
surround them with advantages that will make their 
work-a-day life one of steady uplift, satisfaction and 



THE CHURCH AND THK OUTCAST 43 

wholesome companionship. We can also work to- 
gether to compel the amusements of our community to 
be clean and not arousive of the baser passions, 
whether in the theatre or the movies or the dance 
halls, for 

"Vice is a monster of so frightful mein 
As to be hated needs but to be seen, 
But seen too oft, familiar with her face, 
We first endure, then pity, then embrace." 

We can provide playgrounds on the ground and on 
the roofs so that thousands of children will never need 
to stray from the safe path in their pursuit of the 
pleasures that are the natural cravings of every hu- 
man being. In a word, we can stop doctoring the 
symptoms of this and other social diseases, and knife 
out the cause. We have money enough, we have 
brains enough; we have machinery enough to do it. 
Have we heart enough and love enough and Chris- 
tianity enough and, above everything else, faith 
enough ? 

O ye of little faith! Here they come, the pessim- 
ists, the hopeless ones, the helpless Johns, shaking 
their heads and saying: ''You are an optimist and 
you do not know. You only see what is right before 
your eyes and forget that this evil has been in the 
world since the world began. The High Priestess of 
Sin has always been a High Priestess and always will 
be. Give it up, give it up." No, no, my friend, the 
'grapple of evil is ancient and strong but the grapple 
of God is just as ancient and stronger! We have 
never really entered upon this fight until now and be- 
hold the encouraging, the wonderful results in a few 
swift years ! Sex education is doing wonders. Action 
is doing marvels. The church aroused, means the 
world aroused; the world aroused, means iniquity 
doomed. God is on the side of the moral battalions. 
Get on that side, with Him, and stay on that side till 
victory ! 



44 KATE MARCY 

"Somebody said that it couldn't be done, 

But he with a chuckle replied 
That 'maybe it couldn't' but he would be one 

Who wouldn't say so till he tried. 
So he buckled right in, with the trace of a grin 

On his face. If he worried, he hid it. 
He started to sing as he tackled the thing 

That couldn't be done and he did it. 

There are thousands to tell you it cannot be done; 

There are thousands to prophecy failure; 
There are thousands to point out to you, one by one, 

The dangers that wait to assail you; 
But just buckle in with a bit of a grin, 

Then take off your coat and go to it, 
Just start in to sing as you tackle the thing 

That 'cannot be done' and you'll do it." 



CHAPTER IV- 

MRS. CONSTABLE 
Churchwoman Believer in Divorce^ 

Mrs. Constable is the wife of one of the vestrymen 
of John Hodder's church. He calls upon her and she 
imparts to him the secrets of a double domestic trag- 
edy. In marrying Mr. Constable, she made a great 
mistake. He had a fondness for painting; she cared 
nothing about it. Her personality was stronger than 
his and she finally weaned him away from art and 
wedded him to making money. They were rich, but 
both unhappy. Money had brought them every lux- 
ury but no satisfaction. They had grown as far apart 
as if they were nothing to each other; and yet they 
had lived together for their daughter's sake and the 
church's sake. She says: ''I am a disappointed 
woman, I sometimes think a bitter woman." Then she 
tells him her second grief. She had married her 
daughter to a man of wealth and social position; 
making, as she knew, a brilliant match, and, as she 
hoped, a happy one. But the two were not meant for 
each other. Both were excellent persons but thor- 
oughly ill-mated. They could not get along together 
and so they were divorced. Another beautiful dream 
shattered. Now her daughter has met the man of 
her heart and she wants to marry again. Mrs. Con- 
stable asks John Hodder if he will not marry them 
and perform the ceremony in St. John's. 

Her reasons are these: The canon of the church 
makes it optional for a clergyman to marry the inno- 
cent person. We ought not to be punished for our 
mistakes for life. Surely Christ did not intend that his 
religion should be inelastic, hard and fast; did not 

•Hebrews xiii., 4- Let marriage be had in honor among all, and let 
the bed be undefiled. 



46 MRS. CONSTABI.E 

mean that it should inflict cruelty on the innocent. 
It is our duty to see the effects of character on char- 
acter; how two ill-mated persons may demoralize 
each other to the utter wrecking of one or both their 
souls. Surely Christ's religion does not decree or de- 
sire such a catastrophe. Her daughter has improved 
since her divorce. '*She seems more of a person than 
she was; has cleaner, saner views of life. She has 
made her mistake and profited by it.'* Finally, Mrs. 
Constable says, "Most marriages, under the condi- 
tions of society — of civilization to-day — are merely 
matters of chance." No one can foresee the develop- 
ment of character brought about by circumstances, by 
environment, and when that development is bad and 
drives love away, divorce should be allowed, and re- 
marriage should be allowed. Love is a thing we can- 
not compel. To make two people live together without 
love is to commit a far worse sin against them and 
against society than if we let them separate. True 
happiness is a right no one should deny a human soul, 
and where the opportunity to be truly happy opens to 
a divorced man or woman, the church has no business 
to stand in the way. 

John Hodder replies to her arguments by saying, in 
substance: **The canon leaves it to a clergyman's 
conscience whether he shall re-marry the innocent 
person. I believe that the church, as the agent of 
God, effects an indissoluble bond. And much as I 
should like to do anything in my power for you and 
Mr. Constable, you have asked the impossible. Be- 
lieving as I do, there can be no special case, no exten- 
uating circumstances. Furthermore, if people believe 
that marriage is of God they should labor to make it 
a success, instead of flying apart at the first sign of 
what they choose to call ^incompatibility.' As for 
suffering for our mistakes, we must remember that 
life is probationary and if we seek to avoid the trials 
sent us instead of overcoming them we find ourselves 
further than ever from their solution. Christian 
character develops by submission and suffering; it is 



THK CHURCHWOMAN WHO BEUEVED IN DIVORCE 47 

woman's place to submit, to efface herself. {77^ 
Self-sacrifice in this world will be fully compensated 
for in the world to come. I cannot marry your daugh- 
ter. If you insist that she shall marry, let it be done 
outside of the church by the civil authorities. It 
cannot have the respectability or sanction of a church 
service." (74) 

Mrs. Constable makes a true mother's reply: "I 
will not think that she has wrecked her life — it would 
be too unjust, too cruel. You cannot know what it 
is to be a woman. I don't ask anything of God ex- 
cept that she shall have a chance ; and it seems to me 
that he is making the world better — less harsh for 
women." 

Later on, John Hodder alters his entire position in 
regard to divorce, through the results of his broader 
study of the subject and the influence of Alison Parr. 
Miss Parr says to him : "I believe in divorce, although 
I cannot imagine it for us. I have seen so many 
immoral marriages that I can't think God intends peo- 
ple to live degraded. I am sick and tired of the argu- 
ment that an indissoluble marriage under all conditions 
is good for society. The idea that a man or woman, 
the units of society, should violate the divine in them- 
selves for the sake of society is absurd. They are 
merely setting an example to their children to do the 
same thing, which m.eans that society in that respect 
will never get any better." (505, 506) 

Thus the book brings up this complicated question 
of divorce and the rights of the divorced. It is a 
big question and can only be settled in a big way. We 
must not be ruled, in dealing with it, by our prejudices 
or our sentiments or even our religious training, but 
by the solid, solid facts and by that finest and truest of 
all principles in dealing with all moral questions: the 
greatest good of the greatest number. The divorce 
movement is either an evil or it is not ; it means retro- 
gression or it does not ; it means a vitiated moral pub- 
lic sentiment or it does not. Let us look the question 
fairly in the face, be courageous, and, above all, be 



48 MRS. CONSTABI^E 

honest with ourselves. 

That divorce is on the increase is true. The Federal 
Government reports that between 1887 and 1906, 
twenty years, there were 945,625 divorces in America, 
or nearly one million divorces to thirteen million mar- 
riages, an average of about one divorce to every thir- 
teen marriages. It is believed that the ratio in 1870 
was about one to thirty-four. Experts tell us that this 
rate is steadily becoming higher. 

What are the causes ? 

Investigation shows that it is due to five great rea- 
sons : adultery, desertion, drink, cruelty and neglect 
to provide. Fully 80% of all divorces fall under 
these heads. 

But these are not the root causes. There is some- 
thing deeper at work. These are symptoms. The two 
underlying reasons are: 

First, the growing independence of woman. When 
she was the chattel of man and when she was not 
able to go out into the world and earn her own living 
she had to submit to her master, she was compelled to 
remain the victim of circumstances and custom. But 
as soon as the industrial, commercial and professional 
worlds opened their doors to her and gave her a 
chance to earn a living by her own honest effort and 
skill, then she ceased to call any man master or to 
allow any interference with her rights as a human 
soul. This independence of woman has gone on by 
leaps and bounds, and consequently she will less and 
less stand for anything that degrades her or deprives 
her of what she conceives to be her God-intended 
destiny to be self-respecting and happy. 

The other deep-lying reason is the growing recogni- 
tion of the right of each hum.an soul to be happy here. 
This is an age of the here, as well as the hereafter. 
Although we believe in a future life, and believe it 
for better reasons than we have ever believed it, we 
especially believe in this present life and believe that 
God put us here to be happy here. It is all well 
enough to preach about making up in the next world 



THE CHURCHWOMAN WHO BEUEVED IN DIVORCE 49 

for the things we do not get in this world, but at 
the same time we have reached an age when we want 
everything in this world that we have a right to ex- 
pect in this world ; and we m.ean to get it, sooner or 
later, for ourselves and for everybody else. Carroll 
D. Wright, who has written more wisely on marriage 
and divorce than any expert of our land, has said: 
*'The end of human institutions is human happiness, 
and the divine end of divine institutions is happiness, 
and whatever stands in the way of securing these 
grand ends must be set aside/' That is why public 
sentiment is so strongly in favor of divorce and so 
friendly toward divorced persons. It sees that un- 
fortunate marriages stand in the way of the happiness 
of men and women, and it believes such marriages 
should be annulled, and the way opened for them to 
be happy. 

Is there, then, no way to put a stop to divorce? 
Yes, but not the way proposed by those who would 
grant none at all. That only makes a bad matter 
worse as we could see if we traveled through Great 
Britain, Spain, Italy and France, where the church 
permits no divorce. No one believes that the average 
level of morality is higher in those lands than it is 
here. 

Sir Conan Doyle, speaking in London, said : "There 
are 200,000 men and women in this country who are 
separated. The lower classes are rotted through and 
through by the separation law meant to take the 
place of divorce. Englishmen congratulate themselves 
that their divorce statistics are not so great as Ger- 
m.any, but if they added their separation statistics 
they would find themselves worse than Germany. 
Divorce is not an evil, but a cure — a deplorable cure 
for a deplorable state of affairs." 

The natural thing for most people in search of a 
remedy is to turn to Law. 

First, the law of the land. We have those who 
would have the laws so strict that there would be no 
grounds at all for divorce, as in South Carolina ; others 



50 MRS. CONSTABI.E 

would have them just a shade less strict and allow one 
ground, the Scriptural, as in New York ; others would 
have them thoroughly liberal and allow many grounds, 
like New Hampshire, which grants them on fourteen 
counts. But while we are debating these matters and 
the adoption of a uniform divorce law, there are men, 
who have given a great deal of study to this subject, 
who believe that it would be an effective thing to make 
it a criminal offense and punishable by imprisonment 
to do anything in the marriage relation that would be 
a criminal offense if done outside the marriage rela- 
tion. It is thought that this would deter many a hus- 
band on the very threshold of his brutality or immor- 
ality. They also urge that all divorce trials be made 
public so that the guilty party would not be shielded 
in the least from the pitiless and deterrent light of 
publicity. Many a man would stop his cruel treat- 
ment of his wife if he knew that divorce proceedings 
would expose him to the community in all the ugly 
colors of the brute he was. The object of our laws 
should be to make it likely that a man or woman would 
stop, look and listen before doing the things that lead 
to divorce. 

Second, the law of the church* Here, too, we have 
those who would have the church grant no divorces 
at all, like the Roman Catholic Church and Church of 
England; those who would grant them only for one 
cause as taught in the New Testament, and those who 
believe in giving them on many grounds. This variety 
of opinion among church leaders shows that the Bible 
does not teach any one thing on this subject nor does 
conscience. 

When we turn to history we find that the doctrine 
of marriage as a sacrament did not finally take shape 
in the Catholic Church until after twelve centuries 
of debate and conflict. When Martin Luther started 
his reformation, he came out positively for divorce; 
he is, indeed, the father of modern divorce. Even 
the Puritans, when they settled New England, went 
so far as not only to sanction divorce, but they turned 



THJ^ CHURCHWOMAN WHO BELIE\"E:D IN DIVORCE 51 

the whole matter of marriage and divorce over to the 
civil authorities and would not allow their clergymen 
to perform a marriage at all. For a quarter of a cen- 
tury no Puritan minister ever married anybody; it 
was all done by lay magistrates. With these historical 
facts in mind, we must see that the idea that the 
church should absolutely refuse and stubbornly oppose 
divorce and the re-marriage of divorced people is 
quite a modern thing with us on American soil. 

I, for one, fail to see how any church can refuse 
divorce, either on Scriptural, historical, moral, do- 
mestic or social grounds. If the church means when 
it says: "What God has joined together, let no man 
put asunder" that God joins every couple together that 
a clergyman marries, then it makes the church the in- 
fallible agent of God on earth ; and the question arises : 
"Which church is God's infallible agent?'* Another 
troublesome question comes up: "If God joins to- 
gether every couple the church marries, why do so 
many couples married by the church discover that 
they are wholly unsuited to each other and wholly 
unworthy of each other?'* Surely God makes no such 
mistakes ; surely the Heavenly Father inflicts no such 
immoralities, awful cruelties and desertions upon peo- 
ple as the divorce courts reveal. In view of them we 
might better say : "What God has put asunder let no 
man try to force them to stay together." It must be 
as Martin Luther and as thousands of fearless and 
conscientious ministers have said, "Marriage is a hu- 
man institution." It has all the possibilities of good 
or bad, felicity or tragedy, that go with the works of 
man. 

The church, instead of refusing divorce or seeking 
to further punish divorced couples or trying to settle 
the question whether divorce is right or wron^, should 
recognize that divorce has come and should get to 
work making marriages more noble and remedying the 
underlying causes of divorce. Why will the church 
forever oppose herself to human nature and human 
progress by trying to roll back the tide of human 



52 MRS. CONSTABLE 

emancipation? Why will she try to make intelligent 
men beiieve the things they will not believe and do 
the things they will not do ? She only drives them 
from her or makes hypocrites of them and forces 
them to do in a round about way what they ought to 
be privileged to do in an out and out fashion. For 
in those periods of church history where there were 
no divorces, there were conditions which amounted to 
the same thing; and in those lands where there are 
no divorces to-day there is the grossest immorality 
and a lack of human advancement. On the contrary, 
the two countries, excepting Japan, where divorces are 
greatest are acknowledged to be the most enlightened, 
most moral and most democratic nations of the world 
— Switzerland and the United States. 

This is what the church should do. Instead of at- 
tempting the impossible by trying to prevent divorces 
by canonical or other laws, it should get after the root 
things that lead to divorce. They are all known and it 
is up to the church to put an end to them. The Puri- 
tans called divorce ''the medicine for the diseases of 
marriage." That is just what it is. Let the church 
remedy the causes of the diseases and the medicine 
will not be necessary. 

Here are some things it can do : 

Abolish the saloon. The Director of the United 
States Census states that between 1887 and 1906 there 
were 54,281 divorces due directly to intemperance and 
130,287 due indirectly. A total of 184,568 divorces in 
twenty years caused by drink! Nearly 20% of all 
divorces laid at the door of the saloon! Think of it, 
more than one hundred and eighty thousand marriages 
dissolved and homes destroyed by the drink curse, not 
to mention the thousands of wives who patiently en- 
dure the curse without seeking judicial relief. And 
yet one of the great churches which is setting its face 
against granting divorce at all, insists on serving fer- 
mented wine at its communion; a drink that may help 
to develop in any man or woman a taste for liquor or 
may revive the old appetite in some man or woman 



THE CHURCHWOMAN WHO BELIEVED IN DIVORCE 53 

and send them back to their hell again! Let the 
church be consistent and cut out fermented wine from 
its communion. Let it also annihilate the saloon, and 
it will prevent thousands of divorces and change un- 
happy homes into veritable heavens. 

It can insist that the state shall sanction none but 
eugenic marriages and sanction none but this kind 
itself. In this way it will tremendously reduce the 
unspeakable diseases that are at the root of so many 
unhappy homes. Thousands of young men are infected 
with loathsome diseases, which means disgust and 
misery if they ever marry and may end in the tragedy 
of divorce, if not something far worse. Go over 
divorces due to desertion and you will find that almost 
as many wives desert their husbands as husbands de- 
sert their wives. One hundred and fifty six thou- 
sand two hundred and eighty three women quit their 
husbands out of 367,502 desertions. I will venture 
to say that if you could have gotten at the bottom 
cause it would be this one in many a case. 

The church can also take a great hand in reducing 
marriages for convenience, hasty marriages and 
wrongly-mated marriages, which roll up such a total 
of separations. It must tell its people from its pul- 
pits that happiness is not to be found in partnerships 
for money or title or social position. The papers are 
full of the bitter disappointments and sad disillusion- 
ments that come to those who are joined together for 
such ends. It must also tell its young people that the 
old saying is as true as God's own word : "Marry in 
haste, repent at leisure.'' There is seldom any good 
reason for a hasty marriage or a runaway m.atch. 
Over and over again the parties to such mistakes come 
to grief. The divorce courts are full of such in- 
stances. 

Let the church also condemn one of the most prolific 
sources of married unhappiness and disaster — false 
pretense. The youth tells the girl he is earning more 
money than he is and lavishes thing^s upon her before 
marriage that he cannot afford afterwards; he gets 



54 MRS. CONSTABLE 

her expectations up, and when they drop, her faith in 
him is gone and when faith goes, love dies. So, also, 
the young girl dresses as if her parents were people of 
means, or gets herself up in ways that have their place 
on the stage but not in any true woman's life, and 
when the paint, powder and other things are off, the 
disillusionment is so great that the man simply runs 
away ; it is not the girl he married at all. Young peo- 
ple! start in right: be honest with each other, per- 
fectly honest, and if you cannot love each other on 
that basis be sure you can never love each other, or 
respect each other, on any other basis. 

Furthermore, let the church civilize the frontier so- 
cial life of our nation; get down into the Dalton 
Streets of every city and make them over; get after 
the slums everywhere in America and abolish them 
by getting after the things that lead to poverty, crime 
and vice and abolishing them. Where do the wife de- 
serters go? Out on our social frontier or down into 
our slums, where the rest of us must carry them along 
when we should set every living son of them to useful 
work, and thus help him to support and be proud of 
his family and his family proud of him. It can be done 
and it must be done before we shall be able to point 
to the 200,000 desertions in the past and exclaim: 
*'Thank God, there will be no such record in the 
future." Take our cities out of the hands of corrupt 
spoilsmen and allied criminals, and our social fron- 
tier and slums will change over night. A united 
church could do this! 

It is within the province of the church to urge par- 
ents and educators to teach young men and women 
how to make good husbands and wives. We train 
them to be stenographers, mechanics, lawyers, sales- 
men and everything else under the heaven; but what 
training do we give them in the art — and there is no 
art more difficult — of being husbands and wives, 
fathers and mothers, home makers and home builders? 
I went through the State Normal School in North 
Adams, Massachusetts, and found them instructing the 



THE CHURCHWOMAN WHO BEUEVKD IN DIVORCE 55 

young ladies how to run a house, from the kitchen to 
the garret; how to cook, set the table, furnish the 
rooms, make beds, sweep, sew, and all the other neces- 
sary things of every day life. These teachers were 
to go back to the country schools and teach the country 
girls the same things. I said to myself: *'This is 
something that should be done in some school in every 
city, town and hamlet of America." 

Then there should be a way of teaching every boy 
what it requires to be a man in a home of his own and 
play a man's part like a man. This is a million times 
more important than baseball or football or business, 
all of which have their place, but always a secondary 
place. The man who is a failure in his home is the 
biggest failure on earth, and there are hours when he 
knows it with bitterness of soul. 

And let not the church be afraid to teach Christ's 
distinctive and great principle of the paramount im- 
portance of one's own soul. It is necessary and it is 
beautiful to deny ourself and sacrifice ourself for 
others, and every marriage carries with it many a 
denial and sacrifice for both husband and wife ; but this 
does not mean that we are ever to ruin ourself morally 
and spiritually for others. It doesn't mean that a 
woman must live with a man when she knows he is 
making her less of a woman every day of her life ; or 
that a man must live with a woman when he realizes 
that she is lowering his character and standards every 
hour of his existence. Better get the children out of 
such environment than stay for their sakes. When 
Christ said "What doth it profit a man if he gain the 
whole world and lose his own soul?" he meant that 
there is nothing on earth for which we should suflFer 
the highest self in us to be perverted, disfigured, unde- 
veloped, destroyed. Christianity is the religion of the 
infinite worth of the individual, and only as we save 
ourself can we save society ; only as we develop ourself 
can we develop mankind. The more we teach people to 
respect their own individuality, the more they will re- 
spect the individuality of others and the more of that 



56 MRS. CONSTABLE 

kind of respect there is the fewer tyrants and brutes 
there will be and the fewer divorces. 

If someone comes to us and wants to know the one 
secret above all others of a happy married life let us 
answer: Mutuality; doing everything together and 
being everything together. I think I have never mar- 
ried a couple without writing in the wedding book 
these words : "The secret of married happiness lies in 
the one word 'together.' '' The more a husband and 
wife have in common and the more they keep in com- 
mon, the better it will be all along the way. Alison 
never asked a better question than when she said to 
John: "Isn't marriage truer and higher when man 
and wife start with difficulties and problems to solve 
together? It is that that brings me the greatest joy, 
that I may be able to help you. . . . Didn't you 
need me, just a little?" (462) It was this together- 
ness that made another John and his wife happy from 
the beginning of the chapter to the end; as anyone 
may learn by reading Burns' poem : "John Anderson, 
My Jo." It is this "togetherness" and this "together- 
ness" alone, that will make a marriage a success ; and 
if you don't intend to go it together, don't go it at all ; 
if you can't trust each other absolutely in all things, 
don't marry one another. 

Be not alarmed friend, at the prevalence of divorce 
and the increase of divorce. America's record in 
this respect does not indicate a low domestic morality 
but a high domestic morality; it does not mean that 
our beloved country is going down ; it means that it is 
going toward greater democracy and happiness. It is 
as true to-day as it was fifty years ago when De 
Tocqueville said it: "America is the country of the 
world where the marriage tie is most respected and 
where the highest and justest idea of conjugal happi- 
ness has been conceived." "It may be remarkable," 
Lecky has more recently said, "that this great facility 
of divorce should exist in a country that has so long 
been conspicuous for its high standard of sexual mor- 
ality and for its deep sense of the sanctity of mar- 



TKE CHURCHWOMAN WHO BEUEVElD IN DIVORCE 57 

riage/' but it is perfectly explainable and understand- 
able. I can say with one of the truest publicists of our 
time : ''No one deplores the causes which have led to 
the divorce movement more than I do ; but I do not be- 
lieve that it is a menace to the purity and the sacred- 
ness of the family, but I do believe that it is a menace 
to the infernal brutality, of whatever name, and be 
it crude or refined, which at times makes a hell of 
the holiest relations. I believe that the divorce move- 
ment finds its impetus in the rebellion of the human 
heart against that slavery which binds in the crudest 
bonds of the crudest prostitution, human beings who 
have by their foolishness, by their want of proper 
guidance or by the intervention of friends missed the 
divine purpose, as well as the civil purpose, of mar- 
riage. I believe the final result will be an enhanced 
purity, a sublimer sacredness, and a more beautiful 
embodiment of the greatest trinity on earth — the trin- 
ity of the father, the mother and the child.'* For I 
believe in marriage when love ties the knot and com- 
radeship takes the hand. 

We two make home of any place we go; 

We two find joy in any kind of weather. 
Or if the earth is clothed in bloom or snow, 
If summer days invite or bleak winds blow, 

What matters it, if we two are together? 

We two, we two, we make our world, our weather. 

We two find youth renewed with every dawn ; 
Each day holds something of an unknown glory. 

We waste no thought on grief or pleasure gone; 
Tricked out like hope, time leads us on and on, 
And thrums upon his harp new song or story. 

We two, we two, we find the paths of glory. 

We two make heaven on this little earth; 

We do not need to wait for realms eternal. 
We know the use of tears, know sorrow's worth. 
And pain for us is always love's rebirth. 

Our paths lead closely by the paths supernal; 

We two, we two, we live in love eternal. 

— Ella Wheeler Wilcox. 



CHAPTER V- 

AUSON PARR 

The Modern Woman in Revolt* 

The most important asset of the church is woman. 
She is also the most important asset of the home and 
business. If it were not for the trade of women and 
the trade they create by keeping their men up to the 
mark, think of the stores and factories that would 
go to the wall. If it were not for the maternal and 
home keeping instincts of women there would be no 
home. And if it were not for their belief in educa- 
tion and refinement and their influence in compelling 
their children to go to school, there would be very 
few schools and colleges. So that when we say that 
woman is the most important asset of the church we 
must not forget her tremendous importance to every 
other institution on earth. Even the State is begin- 
ning to recognize its need of her and is giving her a 
rightful place in its administration. 

In a word, we cannot get along without woman. 
And this applies particularly to the church. If it 
were not for the women who would attend our 
churches and what would they do? With woman in 
revolt against the church and religion, the church must 
either change its religion and its earthly program or 
close its doors. That is why the character of Alison 
Parr is so seriously worth the very careful study of 
the preachers of the land and of everyone sincerely 
interested in the welfare of the church and true reli- 
gion. She represents, in many characteristics, the 
coming woman and shows us that she is going to be 
a woman in revolt against Christianity as it has been 
preached and practiced until now. 



*Prov. xxxx., 10. A virtuous woman. Her price is above rubies. She 
openeth her mouth with wisdom and tha law of 
kindness is on her tongue. 



THE MODERN WOMAN IN REVOW 59 

There never was a great book without a great love 
story, even as there has never been a great life without 
the love element in it somewhere. The love story of 
John Hodder and Alison Parr in "The Inside of the 
Cup" is one of the noblest in all literature, bringing 
into light as it does two souls that beat as one for 
the service of humanity, instead of resting content in 
throbbing for each other in the rounds of their own 
personal gratification. Alison Parr saves John Hod- 
der from preaching dead dogmas to a conventional 
congregation, and John Hodder saves Alison Parr 
from the utter rejection of God, Christ and religion in 
her bitter revolt against the hypocrisy and do-nothing- 
for-humanity habit of those high in the counsels of 
the church. She has been brought up in the home of 
a wealthy father who is the head of the vestry of this 
fashionable church; but whose business life is abso- 
lutely unscrupulous and whose home life is little short 
of tyrannical, and she breaks away. To John Hodder 
she is one of those rare and dauntless women, the red 
stars of history, by whom the Dantes and Leonardos 
are fired to express the inexpressible, and common clay 
is fused and made mad: one of those women who 
arouse the passions of men and yet stir the sublime 
efforts of the God.'' (296) She typifies to him all 
those who possess the divine discontent and yearning 
unsatisfied, the fatalists and dreamers. And yet she 
rises, by instinct, to share the fire of his vision of re- 
ligion, as the hidden motive-power of the world, the 
impetus of scientist, statesman, artist and philanthro- 
pist. (295) He sees her in revolt a.s^ainst the es- 
tablished order of thought and established institu- 
tions and wants to save her from the anarchism, ma- 
terialism and pessimism into which she is surely rush- 
ing, like so many of her kind in this age of intense 
antipathy to things as they have been and are. He 
finds her, on close and frank acquaintance, to be a 
young woman with ideals she will not desert. Instead 
of bringing her around to his orthodox and ultra-con- 
servative point of view as he starts in to do, she brings 



60 AUSON PARR 

him around to her heterodox and thoroughly progres- 
sive views of Hfe and duty. It is an allegory of what 
woman is going to do with every preacher and church 
when she lets herself think and then stands by her 
ideals and convictions. 

Consider the ideals of Alison Parr or the modem 
woman of brains and a will. 

She has her ideals as to religion, Christianity and 
the church. Although her father, Eldon Parr, is a 
vestryman and has never missed a Sunday, she has not 
been in church for eight years, more than a dozen 
times. (131) She says that she has tried to be a 
Christian according to the prevailing type, but failed. 

To begin with, she is opposed to authority in reli- 
gion; to doctrines and rules imposed upon the wor- 
shipper from the outside. She says: "As a modern 
woman who has learned to use her own mind, I simply 
can't believe, if the God of the universe is the moral 
God you assert him to be, that he has established on 
earth an ecclesiastical agency and delegated to it the 
power of life and death over human souls.'* (131) 
The claim sounds too commercial, too monopolistic, 
too repugnant. How did the ancient monks and saints 
get the doctrines they want to force us to believe? 
Not from some outward authority but by the use of 
their reason or such reason as they possessed in those 
ages of limited knowledge and experience. Why is it 
our duty to bow down to their conclusions to-day if 
not in accord with modern science? It is as much 
our right to use our reason in religion as it was theirs 
and we are vastly better prepared to arrive at sound 
conclusions than they in this age of universal knowl- 
edge and scientific insight. The one thing an ethical 
person doesn't want is authoritative statement. He 
wants to reason the thing out for himself. Hear this 
magnificent declaration: "God must be my God. I 
cannot take a consensus of opinion about Him, I must 
reason Him out for myself and must make Him my 
own by understanding Him as I am able to under- 



THE MODERN WOMAN IN REVOW 61 

Stand Him." (132) 

She also opposes the doctrines and leading virtues 
of orthodox Christianity. She does not want any 
orthodox immortality. Nothing could be more insipid 
and senseless to her than the orthodox view of the 
hereafter. (225) A heaven of playing on harps and 
singing hymn tunes does not attract or thrill her in any 
way. She also says that nothing could be more cruel 
and undefendable than the idea of a salvation based 
on orthodoxy of creed rather than integrity of char- 
acter. If Christ brought complete salvation, and to 
be saved one must believe in him and his atoning 
blood, why has God permitted so many millions to 
live and die, before and after his coming, who never 
heard of him? (291) If they are lost, God is not 
just and Christ is no complete savior. In fact, if any 
are lost on account of creed, she can see no justice in 
it, because God has allowed the world to have a 
thousand creeds and no one is dead sure which is 
the right one. Hence, she doesn't want a church that 
is spending much time about the future, concerning 
which we can know but little. She wants a church 
that is spending much time on the here concerning 
which we know much and can know everything. A 
religion that wants happiness and the risi-ht kind of 
living here and now, that is her creed. (225) 

She is entirely out of agreem.ent with everyone of 
the doctrines of Christianity as taught by conservative 
orthodoxy, — the virgin birth, the incarnation, the trin- 
ity, the atonement, the new birth, eternal punishment 
and the resurrection of the body. (290) It is only 
after John Hodder has shown her that new meanings 
can be put into those old and time honored phrases 
that she is at all willing to entertain any of them 
again. We must pour the old wine into new bottles or 
lose both the bottles and the wine. 

As for the chief orthodox Christian virtue, humility, 
she will have nothing to do with it. She says : "I 
hate humility." (133) ^'If I should put this and the 
other duties of orthodox Christianity into practice I 



62 AIvISON PARR 

should lose myself/' My friends tell me I should re- 
main at home with my father and deny myself; that 
home is my place and not the life of an independent 
woman. If I should follow their advice and the coun- 
sel of their religion I should gradually wither into a 
meaningless old maid, with no opinions of my own, and 
with no more definite purpose in life than to write 
checks for charities. Your Christianity commands 
that woman shall stay at home, that she is not entitled 
to seek her own salvation, to have any place in affairs, 
or to meddle with the realm of the intellect. Those 
forbidden gardens are reserved for the lordly sex. 
St. Paul, you say, put us in our proper place some 
twenty centuries ago, and we are to remain there for 
all time.*' (134) But she will have none of it. As 
a woman she has a soul, a personality, an individual- 
ity, and she is going to work out her own salvation, 
even though she must do it with fear and trembling. 

In fact she gets so wrought up in her revolt against 
everything, that she opposes the very thought of a 
God or of any law of goodness at work in the world. 
She says : **I am only aware of a remorseless universe 
grinding out its destinies.'' (224) She feels that 
what she sees and knows of life, its cruelties, tyran- 
nies, poverty and heart-break, warrants anybody in 
being a fatalist, materialist, pessimist, atheist, cynic 
and everything else on that line. But John Hodder re- 
minds her of one significant thing — which every 
preacher would remind every woman inclined to take 
the same disgusted view of life — that her very revolt 
is due to her idealism ; her soul's passionate desire to 
have things different; an idealism and passionate de- 
sire that must have their origin outside herself and in 
the very essence of things. It is that power in this 
universe that is making for righteousness that mak^s 
her yearn for a righteous order of things, and that 
power is none other than the righteous God working, 
ever working, in co-ordination with the human will, 
which now opposes Him and now assists Him, in 
achieving His beneficent goal. Hodder, by this simple 



THE MODERN WOMAN IN REVOW 63 

suggestion and this line of reasoning, brings her to 
believe in God and delivers her from her materialism 
and pessimism into faith and optimism. He shows 
her that she, a rich woman, is out in the world working 
day and night against an order of society that will de- 
stroy the special privilege that has made her a rich 
woman, — a thing she could never do if there were not 
some unselfish God outside herself who was working 
within her and urging her on. (225) 

Then he does this great thing for her, as every 
preacher would do for all those women who are drift- 
ing into the idea that the club, the public lecture or a 
new cause that appeals to them, is all that they need 
any more; that religion and the church may be made 
side issues in their life ; in fact, no issues at all. She 
says that her one ambition for people is that their 
lives may be fuller. She wants to replace their drudg- 
ery and despair by interest and hope; their slavery by 
freedom; that life may appear a bright instead of a 
dark thing, that labor may be willing. Otherwise, 
any happiness worth the having is out of the ques- 
tion. (226) But Hodder says to her: '*There is no 
use in lifting people out of the treadmill and remov- 
ing the terror of poverty unless you give them some- 
thing more than you have got.'' (226) She has in- 
tellect and knowledge but no church : no spiritual faith 
that arches her life with the rainbow of divine colors 
and eternal hopes. She has nothing to tell the masses 
beyond bread and butter and the comforts of life. 
That is a great message, but not great enough. They 
must hear of eternity and God, of the highest flights 
and inspirations of the soul, and of contacts with the 
upper world, or having plenty of this world's comforts 
they will become like so m.any of the rich, ever petty 
and ever dissatisfied. Without big visions there can be 
no big life ; without a supernatural creed of some na- 
ture there can be no full life ; without a church home 
with its atmosphere of worship and brotherhood there 
will ever be something lacking in every life. 

But she says: "The church must be different; its 



64 ALISON PARR 

preaching and its ministrations must change. What's 
the use of thousands of working women spending the 
best part of the day in the ordinary church," she asks, 
"when their feet and hands and heads are aching? 
The churches should offer a practical solution of ex- 
istence so that the feet, hands and heads of working 
women would not ache as they do ; so that there would 
be a more equitable distribution of this world's goods 
and a fairer chance for everyone to enjoy life as well 
as toil for life. If Christianity has a solution of life, 
people are demanding that the churches shall stand for 
that solution and perform their function and show us 
how and why, or else cease to encumber the world.'' 
(350) Her arguments are so sensible and so power- 
ful that John Hodder is converted. He turns in to 
make his church over on the lines she suggests. And 
then Alison Parr goes to church! She has become 
convinced that this kind of a church is necessary for 
the success of the Cause of Humanity in which she 
so magnificently believes. 

Here is a woman, too, who has her ideals of philan- 
thropy. To her mind it is not Christianity to throw 
things to the weak. (121) Philanthropy and organ- 
ized charity as they exist to-day have very little to do 
with the brotherhood of man. They are rescueative 
rather than preventive in the fundamental sense. No 
one admits this more readily than charity workers 
themselves, although our organized charities are now 
doing a preventive and home building work also. But 
her point is this : there should be no need of organized 
charity or charity of any other kind in a land as in- 
telligent and rich as this. We should get rid of this 
senseless system of government that puts a premium 
on the acquisition of property instead of the acquisi- 
tion of character and general happiness. I will deal 
with this more fully in the next chapter. Horace 
Bentley's beautiful work for the undermost is only a 
drop in the bucket. Think what could be done if all 
the machinery and science and latest discoveries in 
medicine and surgery could be turned to the service 



THE MODERN WOMAN IN REVOLT 65 

of mankind instead of the building up of private for- 
tunes. How many Mrs. Garvins and Dalton Streets 
there are ! How many stunted children ! How many 
million degenerates the nation is allowing to be made 
because of underfeeding alone ! The lack of nutrition 
affects character as truly as the presence of tempta- 
tion. (221) She says she used to think these things 
intellectually — as so many of us do — but never grew 
indignant over them. Now she feels them and thinks 
them politically and is out to make the government 
think them politically and translate them into new 
laws and a new deal all around. 

This brings us to her ideals as to property. She 
says to her father: **If Christianity were your creed 
you would work for it politically and financially, and 
compel the government to work for it politically and 
financially.'' I am sick of luxury and yet I love it. 
(222) Sick of it because I see the kind of creatures 
it makes at both ends of the social scale. Those who 
have riches so often become useless people, selfish 
people, proud hearted people, cold people, do-nothing- 
for humanity people. They try to appease their con- 
science by thinking that their personal extravagances 
provide work for many, and never seem to think that 
work is not such a wonderful privilege and pleasure 
to give the toilers ; that a little terrorless leisure would 
be as acceptable to them as it is to their more fortunate 
sisters. Those who have poverty, are made poorer and 
leaner by those who sap them of the little that they 
have, and it either lands them in brutedom or fires 
them to anarchy. 

Her father calls her a socialist. She replies: "I 
do not know whether I am a socialist or an anarchist. 
If you Christians were logical you ought to be so- 
cialists. Socialism is Christianity on its political side. 
Oh, I don't know what I am, what I believe. What's 
the use !" Here we have the cry of a soul on fire with 
moral passion and unable to work out a solution of 
the bewildering social situation of the world as it is 
to-day. She flies to socialism for the panacea but she 



66 AUSON PARR 

doesn't remain there. She sees that it will never work 
and never be a finality. She exclaims at last : '*I do 
not believe in sociaHsm because it would not leave me 
free.'' Ah, that is what we all want and demand and 
must have: a social system that will give us freedom 
and at the same time accord us justice and oppor- 
tunity. They accuse John Hodder of being a social- 
ist but he denies it and replies : "I am now a Chris- 
tian. The central paradox in Christianity consists in 
the harmonizing of the individual and the socialistic 
spirit, and this removes it as far from the present 
political doctrine of socialism as it is possible to be.^ 
The book speaks of socialism as ^'something smother- 
ing — a forced co-operation — that does not leave one 
free." The minister and this wonderful woman do not 
know exactly what solution of the intricate social and 
industrial problems they want, any more than any of 
us do; but they do know that they want to change 
from the old theories and curses of private property 
and private rights to new theories and practices that 
shall be strictly and absolutely in conformity to the 
Golden Rule : ^'Whatsoever ye would that men should 
do to you, do ye even so to them, for this is the whole 
law and the prophets." 

The ideals of Alison Parr as to love, marriage and 
divorce have provoked the greatest discussion and are 
sure to continue a controversy that will not end until 
we also have a readjustment in this field. Love, to 
her, means mental mating rather than physical pas- 
sion. Two minds that think as one is a surer route 
to happiness than the old fashioned lane of two hearts 
that beat as one. We live in an age of thought rather 
than of feeling and unless our thoughts in the main 
slip into each other's thoughts there is sure to be fric- 
tion, no matter how well we oil them with the lubri- 
cant of agreeing to disagree. This woman and man 
are intellectual equals, both of them strong in their 
own departments. That is a grand basis for true and 
lasting love. Love, to her, is also life-work mating. 
The two start out together to overcome the same evils 



THE MODERN WOMAN IN REVOLT 67 

in the world and to labor for the same grand ends. 
This makes love the closest and noblest kind of a 
partnership or comradeship and thus deepens, height- 
ens, broadens and strengthens it. 

Marriage, then, from her point of view, is the 
coming together of two souls that belong to each other, 
and when this happens, she says, no marriage cere- 
mony is necessary. But here she is dreaming, and so 
is Winston Churchill, of a state of society that is a 
long way off. It is so far away that this idea of 
marrying sounds utterly Utopian. It may be a fine 
ideal to look forward to. But in the present age, a 
civil ceremony is absolutely necessary to protect the 
property rights involved in marriage; and a religious 
ceremony is also desirable because, as Shakespeare 
long ago observed, **it is religion that doth make vows 
kept.'' She hits, however, upon the two great ele- 
ments in married happiness: pride and confidence. 
The pride of one in the other or, better, of both in 
each other, is at the very basis of married felicity. 
She says: *'A11 my life I have been waiting for the 
man who would risk everything in a great cause." 
(455) She can take pride in such a husband. She 
also says: *'I have needed you all my life — one in 
whom I might have absolute faith.'' (455) Where 
there is perfect confidence there is bound to be ex- 
quisite peace and joy. 

She also takes a view of divorce that we must 
qualify. She doesn't believe that married people 
should live together when love ceases, (507) a doc- 
trine sound enough as a general principle, but needing 
to be carefully scrutinized by people who think they 
no longer love one another to see if it is not something 
else that needs to be rectified so that love may be given 
a chance to reassert itself and flow in the old, delight- 
ful channels again. A woman with a drunken hus- 
band, for instance, may think she no longer loves him ; 
but let him sober up, swear oflf and become a man 
and if she ever loved him she will find the old love 
just as strong and probably stronger for the terrible 



68 AI.ISON PARR 

experience. Divorce, like marriage, is not to be en- 
tered into unadvisedly, or lightly but reverently, dis- 
creetly, soberly, and in the fear of God. It is the 
most solemn step any man or woman can possibly take 
and should be a last resort, not a first nor an early 
resort. 

Victor Hugo once said that as the eighteenth cen- 
tury saw the emancipation of man, so the nineteenth 
century would see the emancipation of woman. That 
emancipation has come, and with it a host of changes 
which have ushered woman into a new world. Dan- 
gers attend her as they always attend the newly free — 
the danger of going to the extreme of those feminists 
who boldly say that *'a feminist recognizes no social 
or moral limitations;'' the danger, too, of ceasing to 
be truly womanly and becoming mannish. Alison 
Parr, with all her magnificent qualities, lacks, to my 
mind, a certain warmth and affectionateness that a 
woman must have to be the complete type of woman. 
She is very brilliant and hates shams and hypocrisy 
but she is just a bit cold. She is too much head and 
not enough heart. This is something every modern 
woman must guard against, for when the heart side of 
her nature cools down I am afraid men will take very 
little interest in her and the world will have very little 
need of her. The world does not need two sexes both 
mannish; but the man and the woman, each as God 
made them plus the wisdom of the ages and the inde- 
pendence and graciousness of their own personality. 

Man, through the long centuries, has been coming 
up. Evolution being true, he has in him something of 
the selfish hog, the poisonous snake, the unclean goat, 
the cruel wolf, the surly bear, the ferocious tiger, the 
snarling dog, the fierce Hon, the sneaking rat, the wild 
horse, the stupid monkey and all manner of inhuman 
beasts. But he is leaving these traits behind. The 
stairway by which he is climbing is woman, with her 
innate purity, her fine sense of honor, her love of 
home, her aflFection for children, her devotion to re- 
ligion and her fascination for mysticism and ideal- 



THE MODERN WOMAN IN REVOW 69 

ism. Man can climb no higher than his mother, wife 
or sister. Emancipate her. Give her room. Help 
her to throw away fear. Help her to abandon super- 
stition. Help her to put into practice the holiest im- 
pulses of the soul. Help her to rely upon her reason. 
Help her to have the clearest faith. Give her a church 
whose creed and deed correspond to the need of the 
world. Thus will her destiny and man's destiny be 
fulfilled. 

*'And so these twain. 
Sit side by side, full summ'd in all their powers, 
Dispensing harvest, sowing the To-be, 
Self-reverent and reverencing each. 
Distinct in individualities. 
But like each other ev'n as those who love. 
Then comes the statelier Eden back to man; 
Then reign the world's great bridals, chaste and calm. 
Then springs the crowning race of humankind." 

— Tennyson. 



CHAPTER VL 

WALLIS PLIMPTON 

Churchman Defender of Ruthless Business^ 

To understand the arraignment of our modern life 
on "The Inside of the Cup*' we must admit the hu- 
miHating fact that our civilization, after nineteen 
hundred years of preaching, is part Christian and part 
pagan. The sad and ominous phase of the situation 
is that the most influential part of our civilization is 
the most pagan, namely, its industrial and commercial 
part. We have succeeded, after long ages of train- 
ing, in doing away with competition and crass selfish- 
ness in the home, school and state. They are on a 
Christian basis, although by no means perfect. But 
our business is still on the ancient basis of rivalry and 
heartlessness. And the worst feature of it is that 
many of those who are responsible for it are in the 
churches — some of them rich and influential men and 
women — which makes the churches loth to cry out 
against them and break up this condition. But so long 
as business continues unchristian in its foundations and 
so long as the church keeps up this policy of silence 
and toleration, the world of to-day is headed for dis- 
aster, which will carry the church with it. The only 
thing to do is to wake the church up, make it shake 
itself loose from its parasites and hinderers and as- 
sume its rightful sway over mankind and save itself 
and humanity from destruction. This is what the 
author is trying to do through the instrumentality of 
this tremendous book. 

The characters in '*The Inside of the Cup" do not 
stand for unreal men and women created wholly out 
of the imagination of the author. They represent real 
human beings that we meet every day of our lives 



'Genesis iv.» 9. Am I my brother's keeper? 



CHURCHMAN DEFENDER OF RUTHLESS BUSINESS 71 

and it is this realism of the characters that makes the 
book so absorbingly interesting and so practically 
helpful. 

There is not a preacher who has not known and 
met Wallis Plimpton. He is just as real to us as if we 
knew him in flesh and blood. He is the parishioner 
who is always telling us exactly what Wallis Plimp- 
ton told his minister. We have in him a very faith- 
ful portrait of that type of business man who comes 
to church to pray and then goes to business to prey! 
This type of business man is, indeed, two charactered. 
He shows one side in his home and church and another 
in his business. At home, he is fine in every way. A 
good husband, a fond father, a delightful host and 
a hearty friend. No one would think of ever criti- 
cizing him in his home relations. Such men really may 
be model husbands and fathers. At church he is ex- 
emplar>', too. Always in his seat, always giving lib- 
erally, always helping wherever he can. Nor does he 
do it to be seen of men : he does it because he likes to 
do it. The religious strain in his nature is very deep 
and strong. You would not call him a deliberate hyp- 
ocrite like Eldon Parr. You would say that on the 
business side of his nature conscience has not yet been 
developed and brought under the reign of love as on 
the other sides. In business he is an entirely different 
man. He is just as ruthless in his methods as his most 
ruthless competitor and just as conscienceless as if he 
never went to church nor knew what it was to be 
a man of highest honor in his home. How do church- 
men account for this inconsistency in their lives and 
defend business methods inspired of Mammon instead 
of Christ? 

Listen to the conversation between Wallis Plimp- 
ton and John Hodder. He is franker with his min- 
ister than such men usually are. He boils down into 
a very few words their whole argument. He says: 
**ril yield to none in my belief in the Church as a 
moral, uplifting, necessary spiritual force in our civili- 
zation, in my recognition of her high ideals; but we 



72 WALUS PUMPTON 

business men, Mr. Hodder, — as I am sure you must 
agree, — have got to live, I am sorry to say, on a lower 
plane. We've got to deal with the world as we find it, 
and do our little best to help things along. We can't 
take the Gospel literally, or we should all be ruined in 
a day, and swamp everybody else. You understand 
me?'' ''I understand you,'' says the rector. (314) 
But he doesn't agree with him! No more does the 
New Business Man of the Twentieth Century ! Plimp- 
ton's argument is the old argument and the common 
argument but it is going the way of all the other old 
lies that have depended for their continuance on the 
undeveloped nature of man's conscience in business 
and politics. 

Analyze these excuses of Wallis Plimpton and men 
like him in business. 

First, we have got to live on a lower plane. They 
can live on the higher plane, the plane they really 
love, in their homes, their church and their social re- 
lations, but when it comes to trade or their profession 
they must cease being Dr. Jeykells and become Mr. 
Hydes! So many men enter business with this fore- 
gone conclusion; with this business and professional 
pessimism and mercenariness. It is a dirty game, they 
say, but we must play it like the dirty fellows we are 
up against or lose. When Hodder asks Langmaid if 
he doesn't ever get tired and disgusted with the Jug- 
gernaut car (409) of business as he rides it, he re- 
plies : "Business, nowadays, is business. The Jugger- 
naut car claims us all. It has become — if you will 
permit me to put my simile into slang — the. modern 
band wagon. And we lawyers (and business men) 
have got to get on it, or fall by the wayside." (409) 
In other words, the young business man is told at the 
outset by this type of man that the moment he enters 
upon his career, whatever it may be, he must make up 
his mind to live on a lower plane. 

Second, we must be crooked in order to succeed, 
Langmaid says: ''The whole business world as we 
know it is crooked and if we don't cut other people's 



CHURCHMAN DE^FENDKR 01^ RUTHLESS BUSINESS 73 

throats they'll cut ours." A prominent banker very 
recently said to a body of business men, speaking of 
the unreliability of those appealing to people of means 
to loan them money: ''I find it quite an undertaking 
nowadays to find even a few million dollars of se- 
curities that I feel safe in recommending to my 
clients." Langmaid's brutal charge is truer than we 
like to believe. The mottoes seem to be : *'Do others 
or they will do you." "Do to others as they intend 
to do to you, but do it first." The big corporations 
are after the little ones as the big fish are after the 
minnows, and they are also after each other : leviathan 
devouring leviathan. It is a terrific struggle and those 
who are in it do not hesitate to fling weak women and 
helpless children into the breach to lower wages and 
cheapen production to beat their rivals ; they stop at 
nothing to put their rivals out of the running, startling 
proof of which was revealed by the courts in the 
Dayton Cash Register Company indictments. Here, 
again, the youth entering business is warned to lay 
aside every scruple and fight like a coward and knave 
instead of a hero and man! 

Third, we cannot take the Gospel literally. Plimp- 
ton says: '^Christianity won't work in business. If 
we should apply the Gospel literally, we should all 
be ruined in a day, and swamp everybody else." 
Eldon Parr says to Hodder : "Business is war, com- 
merce is war, both among nations and individuals. 
You cannot get around it. If a man does not exter- 
minate his rivals they will exterminate him." (343) 
This ruthless program is actually being carried out. 
I have been told that one of the New York papers has 
adopted a new policy of discharging its force of re- 
porters and editors every six months and hiring a 
new staflf, in order to keep up to the minute in every- 
thing. Is there any Christianity in that? What of 
the men who are thus thrown unceremoniously out of 
w^ork with families dependent upon them ? I have also 
been told that in a certain large manufacturing plant 
in New Jersey they only use a man until they have 



74 WAhhlS PLIMPTON 

sucked all the ideas he has and then throw him away 
like a drained lemon. It was told me that one man, 
about to be discharged, said : "But I have been work- 
ing for you twenty years." The answer was : "For- 
get it. We are through with you." Twenty years of 
faithful service and kicked out like that. The poor 
fellow committed suicide. Such firms are not obeying 
any Gospel of Jesus Christ. When you tell them 
so, they reply: "It can't be worked in business. 
Business is war and the Gospel is peace; business is 
any old tidings to men, women and children, and the 
Gospel is good tidings." Langmaid goes so far as to 
say: "The church has no right to meddle outside of 
her sphere, to dictate politics and business." (408) 

As a result of this heartless philosophy and prac- 
tice which is submitted to and engaged in even by men 
who are prominent in the church and synagogue, a 
detestable spirit of greed, a lust for money and power, 
an utter heartlessness of business men toward one 
another and toward the people they employ has been 
creeping year by year, over our country, corrupting 
our people and institutions, and finally tainting the 
Church itself. (378, 379) Do you wonder that a 
halt is being called : that such a man as the Chairman 
of the Interstate Commerce Commission has ex- 
claimed : "I believe that some day we shall and must 
find a method of transferring our whole industrial and 
transportation agencies from a competitive to a co- 
operative basis." 

What is the pulpit's reply? What is the church go- 
ing to do about this thing, for as the church goes hu- 
manity goes. Sooner or later what the church of the 
living God demands, in accord with Christ's spirit and 
ideals, will be done. It has been so all down the Chris- 
tian centuries. It will be so again. Oh, if we can 
only wake up the church and get it on to its job ! The 
fight will be a big one but the church will win. 

The church may say at once and with gladness that 
the Federal Government and the various States are 
taking hold, that is, the people collectively, to make it 



CHURCHMAN DEFENDER 01^ RUTHI.ESS BUSINESS 75 

more and more possible for business men and work- 
ing men to live on the higher plane. This means that 
the people collectively are waking up. The employ- 
ing class tried to make it easier to be human and hon- 
orable in business when they organized the trust. One 
of the prime motives was to escape the degrading 
effects of ruthless competition on personal character. 
A prominent business man said to me, just after his 
firm had entered a trust, ''Now I can do business hon- 
orably and not be always maneuvering to outwit the 
firm that wants to cut my throat.'' But the lust of 
money is very strong and when men had forged this 
gigantic weapon, they soon began to wield it as a ter- 
rible club to beat larger and larger profits out of the 
consumer and lower and still lower wages out of the 
worker. So that those in the trusts have found them- 
selves in an overpowering system which ever tends to 
grind out all the honor and soul they have in them. 
Hence the Federal government and state government 
have been compelled and even invoked to step in and 
bring relief. The Interstate Commerce Commission 
and the Sherman Law have worked wonders in stead- 
ily bringing the great trusts and corporations on to a 
new basis : the coming basis of the Twentieth Century, 
which is public service rather than private profit. 
Other laws have been passed and will be passed by 
the states as well as the Nation that will make all 
public service corporations serve the public and have 
an honorable regard for those they employ rather 
than to merely serve the pocketbooks of their invest- 
ors. The great capitalists of the country get their 
money from the small investors and depositors who 
scrape and save and deny themselves for a rainy day. 
and the law has a right to compel them to use this 
capital for the common good. 

Even private business is yielding to the new doc- 
trines that no man has a right to run his business as he 
pleases. Public sentiment is passing laws compelling 
the manufacturer and merchant to stop employing 
children, stop making women work long hours, stop 



76 WAI.US PI.IMPTON 

crowding the workers into unsafe and unsanitary 
rooms. It is compelling them to compensate workmen 
for injuries sustained at their work. It is working 
toward a minimum wage. And very soon public 
opinion will pass laws which will say to employers, on 
the one hand, ''You cannot lock out your employees 
without consulting an impartial commission.'' But will 
say to labor unions, on the other, ''You shall not order 
a strike until an impartial commission shall have in- 
vestigated the controversy and publicly stated the 
facts." That is, the state will say: "You are or- 
ganized to serve the public. The public is not served 
when industrial disputes are settled by private war." 
In other words, there is no longer any strictly pri- 
vate business or private work. We belong to a social 
order, whether we admit it or not, and the social or- 
der has a right to give us commands whether we like 
them or not. And it is doing it and will do it more 
and more until this civilization of ours is on a Chris- 
tian basis, that is, an equitable, merciful basis. Christ 
never made any claim to being expert in economic 
legislation but he showed himself an expert on social 
religion, and his teachings mean that all forms of 
society must have as their primary purpose the serv- 
ing of the public good. The new day, from the legal 
or law side of the state, is coming with the resistless 
sweep of a tidal wave. We may direct it. We can- 
not stop it. Our likes and dislikes are of no particular 
consequence. The new day is here. It has manifest 
destiny behind it. Many there are who think social- 
ism is coming, but it is something completer than 
that : It is Christianity, which hedges even the greedy 
individual around with just and merciful laws and 
still leaves him a free agent. 

The church's reply to the assertion that to do busi- 
ness successfully we must be crooked, is this: Do 
not quit business if you are a Christian but change its 
aim and thereby change its basis. Business is no more 
wrong in its nature and essence than the home. It 
is all in the way we are doing business and the ever- 



CHURCHMAN DKF'ENDER OF RUTHLESS BUSINESS 77 

lasting dollar so many are grasping for. Christianity 
does not tell men not to keep a watch on unscrupulous 
men and circumvent them at their own game. Christ 
said: ^'Be ye as wise as serpents and as harmless as 
doves.'' There should be no keener business man than 
the Christian business man. He should be the hardest 
man on earth to fool or trick. But Christianity is a 
very stern religion when it comes to morals. It must 
have been so to have survived these tv\^o thousand 
years. It must continue to be so to exist another day 
in these stern times that are trying men's souls. Chris- 
tianity has just one word to say to all who would ex- 
cuse themselves by saying they must be dishonest be- 
cause other men are so unscrupulous and that word 
is this: '*You are not compelled to run a crooked 
business or stay with a crooked house. If you cannot 
earn a dollar honorably, don't earn it at all. John 
Hodder does right to rebuke the individual business 
man and the lawyer who sell themselves for gold. He 
says : "The least we can do is to refuse to indulge in 
practises which jeopardize our own souls, to remain 
poor if we cannot make wealth honestly." (497) 

Christianity turns to the church itself and says you 
can do a tremendous work in putting an end to ruth- 
lessness in business by refusing any longer to accept 
wrong money. When Eldon Parr wants Hodder to 
take his money because "In other days churches were 
built and endowed with the spoils of war, and did not 
disdain the money" (343) he says, in substance, that 
the past has nothing to do with the present : the time 
has come for the churches of Christ to get along with- 
out the money of those who are earning it from prop- 
erty they own and rent in the Dalton Streets of our 
cities and in other ways that they know are injurious 
to mankind and antagonistic to a healthy, virtuous and 
happy order of society. President Hadley of Yale 
has said the church should ostracize those with ill 
gotten wealth. If that were done, they would quit 
their unscrupulousness or quit the church. If they 
left, the church would get along as it has never done 



78 WAI.US PI.IMPTON 

before. It is an awful weight for the church to have to 
carry these misrepresentative Christians whose riches 
is all that they have. But they are beginning to leave 
the church now that they are discovering that it is al- 
tering in its idolatrous sentiment toward them. Some 
of them have used the church to keep the masses down 
and to keep them quiet but now that they see the rising 
up of those masses within the church itself, they are 
getting out and don't know just what to do. As one 
of them recently confessed: "We are between the 
devil and the deep sea.'' He might better have said: 
"We are between God and Mammon." Let not the 
leaders of the churches be afraid in losing this type of 
contributor. It may weaken the churches for a while, 
but a new type will come in and make them as rock- 
ribbed and solid as the frame of this honest universe. 
In answer to the assertion that the Gospel cannot 
be taken literally, the church should reply : "What is 
the Gospel?" It can be stated in five words: "You 
are your brother's keeper." (498) If you do not 
believe me, read the parable of the Good Samaritan. 
Hear also these words of Jesus : "A new command- 
ment give I unto you, that ye love one another as I 
have loved you." The Gospel of Jesus Christ is the 
love of one another. Now ask if the Gospel can be 
taken literally? Ask if each of us can act every day 
of his life, in business and out of it, as if he were his 
brother's keeper? The answer is: "Of course he can." 
The further answer is : "He must so act or get out of 
business altogether." These are new times, friends, 
and the old methods and old treatment will not go 
much longer. Hear what an eminent banker recently 
said to an audience of hard-headed men of business: 
"The answer is that we are not only going, but we 
have arrived at the time where all business will be con- 
ducted on an honest and truthful basis. ... To 
my mind one of the most pertinent facts that everyone 
of us should realize and take to heart, is just this, that 
in the future no business of any nature in this country 
can survive that is not founded on the basis of hon- 



CHURCHMAN DEFENDER OF RUTHI^ESS BUSINESS 79 

esty, square dealing and giving the public full value 
for its money. . . . What we thought was the 
truth as to the proper way to conduct business ten 
years ago, is now considered to be the wrong way." 

What better proof could any right-minded man 
have that Christianity can be made to work in business 
than the fact that it has been made to work and is 
being made to work in innumerable cases this verj^ 
hour. There passed away in New York not long ago 
one of its greatest merchants. His business had been 
simply colossal. Indeed, his firm had been one of the 
leaders for nearly a half century of the retail mer- 
chants of America. What were his principles and 
practises? Every one of them. Gospel principles and 
practises. His lawyer stated after his death that in 
all cases of dispute he would first ask: ''Are we 
under legal liability?" and then ask: ''Are we under 
a moral obligation?" That man made millions and, 
better than millions, he made a character; and as a 
corollary to that he made a demonstration of the work- 
ableness of this honest Christian religion of ours. In 
this very city there are to my knowledge two firms. 
One is thoroughly unscrupulous. It is slowly but 
surely going to the wall. The other is absolutely 
honorable. It is steadily forging ahead. One of its 
employees told me he couldn't help likening the heads 
of the firm to the delightful Cheeryble Brothers in 
Nicholas Nickleby, it was so delightful working for 
them. I want our business men, and especially all 
young men, to let these facts soak into their con- 
sciences, that they may give them heart in their de- 
termination to shape their lives and their afifairs in 
proud harmony with the new ideals. 

There are two possible business maxims. 

One is this : "Every man for himself and the devil 
take the hindermost." That is an old, old maxim; 
but it is going, going, going. 

This the other: "Every man for himself and for 
his neighbor also." That is the maxim of Christ's 
religion, truly understood; and it is coming, coming, 



80 WAIvUS PI.IMPTON 

coming. Christianity teaches us to look out for our- 
selves and make the most of the best that is in us ; to 
make a large and ever larger life for ourselves, and, 
at the same time, to go and share that ever enlarging 
life with our fellow men. And I want to remind you 
that the leaders in modern business, and the teachers in 
our schools of commerce and of efficiency, are telling 
men this same thing, that a new code of business ethics 
is coming and a new spirit of esprit de corps. They 
are saying that you cannot help your neighbor to 
prosper without adding to your own prosperity. 
There is prosperity enough for all, and this is the 
principle of passing prosperity around. The wisest 
One the world has yet produced praised this spirit of 
reciprocity in business and said: '*Give and it shall 
be given you; good measure, pressed down and run- 
ning over shall men give into your bosom." 

What we need to-day is a revolt of the business 
man. We have a revolt of the women, the preachers, 
the teachers, and even the politicians. The time is due 
for business and professional men to rise up and be 
heard for rightness and righteousness in business. 
When enough of them join the revolt, their path will 
be cleared as all the other paths are being cleared, and 
they will no longer have any excuse for being one 
thing at home or in the church and a totally different 
thing at work. Each man knows in his own heart 
what is right and what is wrong, and if your business 
plan does not coincide with your own personal ideas 
as to what is right, don't go ahead with it. This is 
the nearest, the easiest and the surest way to help 
along the greatest needed reformation of the times. 

Who of us really likes the Juggernaut car of busi- 
ness as it goes grinding along, crushing the millions 
and wasting the true fragrance of their souls? Who 
of us is not becoming sick and tired of money, money, 
money as the standard of success, and asking God to 
shift the ideal of this great American people to some- 
thing better, diviner, sweeter, finer, eternal? Great 
God ! we pray thee to give us the right ideal and give 



CHURCHMAN DEFENDER OF^ RUTHLESS BUSINESS 81 

it to US before we die, of working for the joy and use 
of working, the ideal that reigns in the heaven the 
poet dreamed of and ought to reign here. 

When earth's last picture is painted and the tubes are twisted 
and dried, 

When the oldest colors have faded and the youngest critic has 
died. 

We shall rest; and, faith, we shall need it — lie down for an 
aeon or two. 

Till the Master of all good workmen shall set us to work 
anew ! 

And those that were good shall be happy; they shall sit in a 
golden chair; 

They shall splash at a ten-league canvas with brushes of 
comet's hair ; 

They shall find real saints to draw from — Magdalene, Peter 

and Paul; 
They shall work for an age at a sitting, and never be tired 

at all! 

And only the Master shall praise us, and only the Master 

shall blame, 
And no one shall work for money, and no one shall work 

for fame; 
But each for the joy of the working, and each in his separate 

star. 

Shall draw the thing as he sees it for the God of things 
as they are! 

— Rudyard Kipling. 



CHAPTER VIL 

HORACE BENTLEY 

A Man Who Was a Continual Christmas^ 

We have often noticed, in attending a grand opera, 
that a particular melody has kept occurring and re- 
curring from beginning to end; now as a mere sug- 
gestion, now more pronounced, and finally in all its 
perfection of tone and significance. This is very no- 
ticable in listening to the "Tales of Hoffmann," par- 
ticularly in the scene where the softly beautiful Bar- 
carolle is played and sung. We hear it at first faintly, 
then fugitively, then clearly, then fugitively again and 
softly, oh so softly ! until it dies away and is no more, 
save a memory of an exquisite melody without which 
the opera would take very little hold on the enthusiasm 
of mankind. In much the same way there runs a 
melody through "The Inside of the Cup'' ; the melody 
of the Christmas spirit, which is the spirit of peace 
on earth and good will among men. But here it takes 
the form of a human personality instead of music. 
It is the melody of the life of Horace Bentley. He 
comes and goes from chapter to chapter, but he is 
always there as the undertone or overtone or support- 
ing tone of the lofty optimism with which the book is 
vocal. Horace Bentley is a continual Christmas; day 
after day living a life of peace and good will; day 
after day causing that same kind of life to well up in 
the hearts of his fellow men. He it is who works 
miracles in the destinies of John Hodder, Alison Parr, 
Kate Marcy, Mrs. Garvin and even the Bishop. He 
pervades their lives and urges them to finer issues. 
The Bishop says : "It gives me satisfaction, Hodder, 
to confess to you freely that Horace Bentley has 
taught me, by his life, more of true Christianity than 
I have learned in all my experience elsewhere.'^ (470). 

That is a rather remarkable admission from a 



Xuke II., 14. Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace on earth, 
good will among men. 



THE MAN WHO WAS A CONTINUAL CHRISTMAS 83 

Bishop, especially as Horace Bentley has not attended 
church for years and nowhere has anything to say 
about his theological beliefs. Every reader of the 
story comes away feeling as the Bishop did, — that this 
kindly, helpful, self-forgetting, genial man embodied 
more of Christ and true Christianity in his heart and 
deeds than many a man who goes to church regularly 
and is thoroughly sound in his orthodoxy. Horace 
Bentley will ever stand out among the characters of 
great novelists as a type of a true Christian. If we 
want to know what it means to really follow Christ 
in this Twentieth Century, we need only to study this 
man's life to get our answer. 

To be truly Christian, looking at it in the light of 
Horace Bentley's career, we must have a genuine love 
of the church. Paul tells us that Jesus loved the 
church and gave himself for it that he might present 
it a spotless church, without flaw or wrinkle or any 
such thing. He loved it because it was to be the one 
instrument by which he could work out his great plans 
for humanity. Organization is necessary in a world 
as vast as this, and especially for such a social religion 
as Christianit}^ We need some place where we can 
meet those of like mind and purpose; some place to 
have our religious enthusiasm kindled and our spir- 
itual outlook broadened ; some place to find those who 
will sympathize with us in our sorrows, rejoice with 
us in our good fortune, bear with us in our infirmities, 
guide us in our perplexities and go forth with us in 
our mighty determinations. The church is such a 
meeting house when it is a true church. 

Horace Bentley showed his love for the church by 
making it handsome and prosperous when he was 
connected with it. He was the man who had the 
most to do with the designs that made St. John's noted 
for its beauty and phurchliness. He was always a 
generous giver and always constant in his attendance. 
He left because he lost his fortune and could not 
afford to own his pew. He also left because under 
the leadership of those who were running it as a 



84 HORACE BENTLKY 

fashionable club and for their own dishonest ends, it 
was not doing the work for humanity he believed a 
church ought to do. But the moment it began to live 
up to its duty and opportunity, under John Hodd^r, 
he came back, which shows where his heart had always 
been. Our hearts should also be with this institution. 
We should want our church to be as beautiful and as 
churchly as we can possibly make it, counting it not a 
sacrifice but a rare privilege to give to that end. I 
never wonder at the men and women who devote so 
much of their thought and time and money to their 
church. Are they not doing for the dearest place on 
earth, next only to their own home? I only wonder 
at the Christians who can allow their sanctuary to fall 
into disrepair and to struggle along more dead than 
alive for want of money with which to do the splendid 
things God has given it the opportunity to do in this 
great, needy world. Sir Christopher Wren was the 
greatest architect of England. He built and left many 
wonderful edifices, but when he created St. Paul's 
Cathedral I am sure his pride and happiness were 
complete. He had given his country a noble building, 
that would go on ennobling the human race all down 
the multitudinous years. And this should be one of 
the master passions of every Christian heart — to have 
a church home and to make that church home abso- 
lutely ideal in every respect. 

Horace Bentley also showed his genuine love for 
the church by saving to it its most valuable men. 
Jesus drew only a few disciples to his side out of the 
thousands in his day because preachers are born and 
not made, and he held on to them to the very end. The 
church of to-day should follow his example and not 
let its gifted sons depart, either from its pulpits or its 
pews. They are too rare to be spared, and the harvest 
truly is white for the reapers. But gifted preachers 
are being allowed to drop out of the ministry by the 
hundreds. They go from us because they change their 
theology and are treated unmercifully by the authori- 
ties who have vested funds in their control or hold 



THE MAN WHO WAS A CONTINUAI, CHRISTMAS 85 

some other whip hand. Horace Bentley was not of 
this spirit at all. When John Hodder confessed to 
him that his views had undergone a radical change, 
that he had all but lost faith in the church itself and 
in religion, too, Mr. Bentley did not do, as so many 
outside of the church are always doing, — urge him to 
drop the whole thing; quit the pulpit and religious 
associations and go into the scramble to make a living. 
No ! He said : "Young man, stay just where you are ; 
bring the church up to your ideals." And Hodder 
stayed ! In after days he said : "Had it not been for 
Mr. Bentley I should not be here to-day." Oh, my 
friend, never dissuade a fine soul from continuing a 
noble career just because he happens to be in revolt 
against its perversions or happens to be down in the 
depths of skepticism and despair. Rather be the one 
to steady him and hold him to his splendid task until 
the new hour comes, when he will be able to see things 
in their true perspective and do things with the new 
power that comes always with the new vision. 

Horace Bentley furthermore attested his genuine 
devotion to the church by urging it to set its face 
toward the poor rather than away from them, as 
churches are tempted to do. Jesus would never have 
given the world a successful religion if he had not 
given the world a people's religion; if he had not 
turned away from wealth and privilege as such, and 
gone frankly to the masses. His churches dwindle 
and die whenever they forget this and try to follow 
wealth and fashion. Not that I would leave the im- 
pression that there are not people of riches and fashion 
who are just as splendid in their lives as people of 
moderate circumstances and homespun; but to one 
rich person there are ten thousand in other circum- 
stances, and the church to thrive must go after the 
ten thousand. And, mark you, the ten thousand want 
religion and will love religion and all of the best things 
that go with it if we can only get them to really see 
what religion and the church have to offer. Do the 
masses want great music? Yes, if it is brought within 



86 HORACie BKNTI.]^Y 

their comprehension and their purse. Go to the New 
Century Theatre in New York and see the multitudes 
that gather to hear grand opera in EngHsh and at 
reasonable prices. It is only necessary to adapt the 
loftiest things of this world to the every-day man and 
woman to get a response. They will come to the 
church and fill the church if the church will make it 
attractive and halfway easy for them so to do. 

But this takes money, as well as thought and devo- 
tion, and this is the opportunity of those more blessed 
in this world's goods than others. No one wants the 
well-to-do to carry the less prosperous, and the less 
prosperous would be the first to resent being carried ; 
but Christ wants his well-to-do followers to put their 
church on the very best possible financial footing, not 
as a matter of mere duty, but of high privilege and 
true joy. He wants them to do all in their power to 
bring the church up to that i>erfection of equipment 
where it can provide the things that will attract the 
multitudes to-day and hold them and turn them out 
finer and still finer men and women. David Hume, 
the Scotch philosopher, once said : ''There can be no 
Heaven as long as there is a Hell." He was thinking 
of the next life and the impossibility of anybody being 
perfectly happy in the traditional heaven as long as 
anyone was unutterably miserable in the traditional 
hell; but it is a statement that also applies to this 
world. There is no safety and there can be no perfect 
happiness for the best of us as long as there is a slum 
region in our city of poverty and bitterness at our 
doors. The church of Christ is in this world for the 
sake of this world ; it is here to bring peace and good 
will among men on earth; it is here to make it possi- 
ble for everyone to live in an earthly heaven by deliv- 
ering everyone of us from an earthly hell. That is 
Horace Bentley's message to the church. It is none 
other than the message of Jesus Christ and of every 
fore-looking follower in this age of an earth-centric 
religion and a practical church. 

But Horace Bentley went further and did the per- 



THE MAN WHO WAS A CONTINUAI. CHRISTMAS 87 

sonal thing that is demanded of every man who would 
show that the spirit of Christ grips his soul — he 
manifested a genuine love for humanity. Christianity 
does not end with the church. When it does it be- 
comes churchianity. It uses the church as a means to 
an end, and that end is the transformation and trans- 
figuration of humanity through personality. The 
world is saved not by institutions, but by men. The 
race is lifted not by elevators or derricks or prayers, 
but by human hands. It is the one by one process : 
you coming to me, I going to him and he going to 
someone else: Jesus finding Andrew; Andrew finding 
Peter ; Peter finding Philip ; Philip finding Nathaneal, 
and so on all down the glorious line. Christianity does 
not teach us to do exactly the same thing that some- 
body else is doing and in exactly the same way; but 
to learn the principles of religious conduct and put 
them into practise as we have opportunity and accord- 
ing to our own ability. It does not follow because 
Horace Bentley did slum work that all Christians are 
to do slum work. Only a few are fitted for that kind 
of service; but all are fitted to learn the same princi- 
ples that actuated his life and apply them somewhere 
themselves. 

This superb man practised the principle of Chris- 
tian forgiveness and magnanimity. Nothing that 
Christ said or exemplified was more beautiful than his 
attitude to forgiveness and the erasure of all bitter- 
ness from our memories. His followers were to for- 
give not only seven times but seventy times seven. 
They were to cleanse their hearts and thoughts of all 
malice and revenge, and keep them cleansed. It is a 
hard thing to do ; but it is the Christian thing to do. 
We love our religion just because it gives us hard 
things to do! Eldon Parr ruined Horace Bentley 
financially, but there is never a hint of it in anything 
he ever says, and not a word of reproach even when 
somebody else refers to it. The leading men of the 
church were hand in glove with Eldon Parr, but Mr. 
Bentley expressed no cynicism about the church. 



88 HORACE BENTI^EY 

Whatever he thought of such men and their methods 
he kept to himself, and went about his business. He 
knew that things would work themselves out right in 
God's good time. And they did. ''Vengeance is mine, 
I will repay, saith the Lord.'' If vengeance is neces- 
sary in any case where we are concerned let us leave 
it to God, knowing that when he repays he will put 
love into the retribution where we would put hate. 

Another Christian principle beautifully at work in 
Bentley's life is affection for children. What a won- 
derful lover of children Jesus was ! He took them up 
in his arms and blessed them; he stood for their 
rights ; he ministered to their happiness ; he set out to 
make this world just as much their world as man's 
world. No follower of his should ever forget this, 
whether he have children or not. It is all right to 
love a dog or a cat or a parrot or some other pet, but 
it is infinitely better to love a child and do something 
for children. We cannot build our civilization on a 
dog or cat or parrot ; we can only build it on the child. 
'Tor of such is the Kingdom of Heaven." 

Horace Bentley was a continual Christmas in more 
senses than one, but surely in being an every-day 
Santa Claus to the poor boys and girls of Dalton 
Street. He always went around with little candy 
beans in his pockets. (202) The children were 
allowed to dip into those pockets and help themselves. 
It was an inexpensive treat for a man to give, but 
what a big treat it was for those poor children! He 
also gathered the boys of the slums around him and 
encouraged them to organize their baseball nines, 
although he did not know a thing about the game. 
Then he went with them to the lots and kept them 
from eating each other up when the umpire made a 
bad decision or something else happened to rouse their 
temper. He interested John Hodder in their ball 
games, and Hodder brought a pair of boxing gloves 
along, so that when they wanted to fight over some 
disputed point he allowed them to go at it in a more 
scientific and less bloody way than with bare fists. 



THE MAN WHO WAS A CONTINUAL CHRISTMAS 89 

Now these men were educating those boys to be some- 
thing better than street gamin and slaves of temper, 
and doing it by keeping as close to them as they could. 
I do not know what you can do for children in some 
specific way, but you will soon find out if you keep the 
children of the world close to your heart and thoughts 
and prayers. They are here by the thousands, and 
they appeal to us with their little hands, often lame 
little hands, often very dirty little hands, to be their 
friends and do things to make their lives fuller and 
richer, brighter and purer than the world has so far 
done. 

This man also practised the great Christian principle 
of faith in human nature. The world has very little of 
it. It meets people in so many shocking, selfish, un- 
scrupulous, ungrateful ways that it has grown very 
dubious. The world has never taken very much stock 
in man ; that is why it has treated him far more care- 
lessly and cruelly than its horses and cattle. But 
Christ, from the moment he began to preach, had every 
faith in human nature. If a man had been unscrup- 
ulous in business, like Zacheus, that didn't make any 
difference to Jesus: he believed the scrupulous heart 
was there somewhere in that man's breast. If a 
woman had been a creature of the street, like the 
Magdalene, that did not harden him toward her. He 
knew that there was a pure streak in her soul and 
that kind words would strike it and make her pure 
again. In fact, so wonderful and complete was Jesus* 
faith in human nature that he cried to all men : ''Be 
ye perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect." He 
knew that somewhere in every soul there lurked the 
divine, only waiting the right faith and the right touch 
to start it into life again. Horace Bentley's magnifi- 
cent conclusion after many years of contact with the 
lowest of the low was this: ''I have lived a great 
many years, and the older I get and the more I see of 
human nature the firmer has grown my conviction of 
its essential nobility and goodness." (171) That is 
Christianity and should ever be the faith of Chris- 



90 HORACE B^NTlvEjY 

tians. "The innermost worth of the undermost man" 
is one of the two foundation faiths of the religion we 
profess, the other being ''the outermost love of the 
centremost God." 

But some man will say : ''What about the very bad 
people : the Kate Marcy's of the world and the incor- 
rigibles ?" Just what Horace Bentley observed in their 
case: It may be a disease. We are beginning to 
recognize that we are dealing, in many cases of vice, 
and crime, and degradation, with a disease and not 
with a naturally vicious or criminal disposition. A 
prominent American has recently said that our crim- 
inals should be sentenced by physicians instead of 
lawyers. I think we are working toward that view, 
and that great change in criminal jurisprudence. 
There can be nothing wrong with human nature per se 
if it is God's nature, as Christians believe. The trouble 
comes largely from the diseases of the body or the 
diseases of civilization. Church-going people are the 
ones to believe that those diseases can and must be 
cured rather than continue to advocate the easier but 
crueller way of merely punishing the sick offender. 

Horace Bentley believed in giving every soul the 
fullest possible opportunity and assistance to recup- 
erate and recover, which, after all, is the only justifia- 
ble and Christian attitude to take in penology. He 
went and lived in the slums in order that he might 
preserve a true home atmosphere right among the 
people who needed a refined home most. His door 
was always open to the poor and unfortunate. They 
never went away with something for their bodies 
without also getting something for their souls. He 
also purchased a house out in the country — doubtless 
with funds provided by other big-hearted people — 
and there he placed Mrs. Garvin — the once prosperous 
woman whose husband committed suicide because of 
misfortunes and treachery in business. He made that 
home a retreat where he could send tired women to 
rest up, or unfortunate women to rise again, assisted 
by loving friends when they began their struggle to- 



THE MAN WHO WAS A CONTINUAI^ CHRISTMAS 91 

ward purity. It was not a large house, but just a 
homelike house, where soul could deal with soul ; love 
could deal with love. He had in mind the modem 
method of reformation by personality working on per- 
sonality instead of the machinery of punishment try- 
ing to grind out a repentant will. 

In a word, Horace Bentley put into practise the 
beautiful, animating principle of Christianity, that of 
every-day, personal usefulness. We cannot pay Jesus 
any higher compliment than to say that he went about 
doing good. I do not know of anything in this world 
more wonderful than that in him or us or anyone. 
There are a great many things Christ might have done 
and a whole list of things we might do, but if we just 
try to do something for others, whatever we can, I 
believe that God will say of us : "This is my beloved 
son in whom I am well pleased.'' Horace Bentley went 
to the undermost and helped the undermost because 
they need more help than other classes, or they would 
not be the undermost. There is a screw loose some- 
where in a man's organism, or he would not belong to 
the down and out class. The tramp on the road who 
admits that he could never keep a job may not be 
afflicted with laziness, but may have slipped a cog of 
some kind in his mental or moral gearing. The fellow 
who can never save a dollar and when a rainy day 
comes is flat on his back, his family crying for bread, 
isn't altogether a rational human being. He needs 
pity and study. But while pitying him and studying 
him we must not let him and his family starve to 
death. Remember, God gave us hearts as well as 
brains, and in the midst of all this modern machinery 
of scientific charity the Christian is to keep his heart 
working and lift. I think that one reason God in- 
vented Christmas was to prevent us from refrigerating 
our hearts while believing in and pursuing the meth- 
ods of organized charity. 

Horace Bentley was that kind of man who helped 
men because they needed help and loved men because 
they needed love; that kind of a man who answers 



92 HORACE BENTLEY 

you when you say to him : ''I know someone in need'' 
by asking: ''What can I do to help" He was that 
type of man who goes along the street and takes a 
kindly interest in everybody he sees ; who gets on to a 
street car and remembers that other people have wor- 
ries as well as himself ; that sort of a man who carries 
a little oil can with him in the way of opportune words 
with which to lubricate the bearings of life and get 
rid of all the friction he can. It was Phil Goodrich 
who said that Horace Bentley had only to get on a 
car to turn it into a church, for just as surely as a 
man sat next to him who was coming home from work 
irritated and out of sorts, his nerves worn to an edge 
by the heat or by some exasperating occurrence, this 
old gentleman would talk with him so pleasantly and 
gently that he would be sure to get off at his street 
corner feeling better. (198) 

If such a man was not a continual Christmas, I ask 
you to give me a better phrase by which to describe 
him, for Christmas is a dear, loving time when we 
are all inclined to think of others and to do for others 
the kindly, beautiful little things that, after all, go 
to make up the total of a happy life. 

Alison Parr confessed that contact with Horace 
Bentley made her dissatisfied with herself ; (206) 
made her realize how little she was really doing, with 
all her leisure and talent, for the church and for 
humanity. It makes us feel the same way and starts 
us up saying: "The sum total of life is not in the 
great things but the small things. God help me to be 
thoughtful and faithful in that which is least rather 
than miss my opportunities by waiting for that which 
is much.'' 

John Hodder found that acquaintance with such a 
man saved him from going to pieces on the reefs of 
doubt and desperation. When he was sinking, sink- 
ing, sinking in the dark sea of skepticism and material- 
ism into which he had been thrown by breaking away 
from all that he had ever believed and held sacred, it 
was the hand of Horace Bentley that drew him up and 



THE MAN WHO WAS A CONTINUAI^ CHRISTMAS 93 

delivered him from spiritual death. (215) An illus- 
tration, my brother Christian, of the good we can do 
by simply being true to the light that is in us. Mr. 
Bentley never talked theology, but he ever lived re- 
ligion. That is what made hi's personality luminous 
and salvatory. 

The preacher also discovered through Horace 
Bentley that the form which all true religion takes is 
that of consecration to a Cause — one of God's many 
causes ; that the meaning of life is to find one's Cause 
and to lose one's self in it. He found his mission to 
be to help liberate the Church, fan ijito flame the fire 
which was to consume the injustice, the tyranny, the 
selfishness of the world, until the Garvins, the Kate 
Marcys, the stunted children, and anaemic women 
were no longer possible. (277) Your Cause may 
be Universal Peace, or Woman Suffrage, or the Over- 
throw of the Saloon, or the Cure of som.e Dread Dis- 
ease. Find your Cause, but don't leave the church 
to work for it. Keep in touch with a church that 
will inspire you in your work, for without religion as 
the supreme motive in life you will never accomplish 
your task or be satisfied if you do accomplish it. 

We men of earth have here the stuff 
Of Paradise. We have enough ! 
We need no other things to build 
The stairs into the Unfulfilled — 
No other ivory for the doors, 
No other marble for the floors, 
No other cedar for the beam 
And dome of man's immortal dream. 

Here on the paths of every day — 
Here on the common human way 
Is all the busy gods would take 
To build a heaven, to mould and make 
New Edens. Ours the stuff sublime, 
To build eternity in time ! 

— Edunn Markham. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

What, Then, Is Christianity^ 

The most remarkable interview in the career of 
Jesus is where Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews, a 
member of the Sanhedrin, a man well versed in re- 
ligous matters, comes to him by night and asks him to 
explain his new religion ; to tell him what he proposes 
to do for the Jewish race and the rest of humanity. 
When Jesus is through with his explanation, Nico- 
demus is not able to comprehend him; not able to 
understand a Kingdom which is to be inward instead 
of outward ; a worship that is to be one of spirit rather 
than of rites and ceremonies. Then Jesus looks at 
him and says : ''You must be born anew before you 
can enter into my idea of the Kingdom of God and 
grasp what I mean to accomplish with my new re- 
ligion/' 

John Hodder, basing his thought upon this great 
interview, calls the religion of Jesus Christ the religion 
of the reborn. He preaches the most powerful sermon 
of his life from the text: ''Except a man be born 
again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God." But he 
does not mean by rebirth what has so long been taught 
in the churches — a change from being the child of the 
devil to being the child of God, as if human souls 
made in the image of God could ever lose that image 
as if little children who come into the world as pure 
as the driven snow could ever have come from a devil- 
ish source! John Hodder means by rebirth exactly 
what Jesus meant: a spiritual trans fomiation ; an in- 
ward change by which a man is able to see spiritual 
values instead of ceremonial values, and place the 
supreme estimate on the things of the conscience in- 
stead of the rites and ceremonies of a church. In a 
word, to be a Christian one must be reborn into the 
religion of the Spirit. This is Christianity, — the re- 
ligion of reborn men and women who have changed 



*John. E^xcept a man be born again he cannot see the Kingdom of God. 



WHAT, THKN, IS CHRISTIANITY? 95 

from a materialistic and short view of life to a spir- 
itual and eternal estimate and attitude. 

When Eleanor Goodrich spoke of admiring a man 
of modern ideas, referring to John Hodder, Mr. 
Bridges inquired what she meant, and she replied: 
'^Somebody who will present Christianity to me in such 
a manner that it will appeal to my reason and enable 
me to assimilate it into my life." (7) Now I want 
to see if I can do that for you, my friends, and make 
this view of Christianity perfectly clear and perfectly 
acceptable. I like the idea of calling it "the religion of 
the reborn" so long as we mean by that the religion 
of the spiritually-minded rather than those who have 
gone through some mystical rite of superficial rebirth 
administered by some church. 

Christianity is the religion of men and women who 
will not believe some things that their senses are all 
the time tempting them to believe; nor do certain 
things that the unreborn are all the time trying to force 
them to do. 

The reborn see that Christianity is not a religion of 
theories, although it does not forbid theorizing. It 
does, however, rise up and protest when its believers, 
turning their theories into dogmas, seek to compel 
men to accept them. Jesus never theorized about God ; 
he knew there was a God. He never theorized about 
the nature of God; he knew that God was love. He 
never theorized about the existence of the soul; he 
knew man had a soul. He never theorized about immor- 
tality; he knew there was a future life. How he 
knew these things he left to men to know and explain 
who themselves were also reborn into a spiritual com- 
prehension of the universe. Christianity assumes these 
fundamental beliefs : it doesn't argue for them. 

Man is tempted to theorize about everything, and 
the Christian quite as much as any other man ; but the 
Christian ought to know better than to put his theories 
up as Christianity. They are simply matters of pious 
speculation, and he should be willing to offer them 
as such, and not make it appear that they are Christian- 



96 WHAT, THEN, IS CHRISTIANITY? 

ity and that anything different is not Christianity. 

For instance, there are theories as to government in 
which Christian people indulge. Just now one of the 
favorite theories among a great many Christians is 
socialism. They are so intense in their advocacy of it 
that they say socialism is Christianity and Christianity 
is socialism. But it is not. Christianity is not any 
one theory or scheme of government. It is a spirit in 
government rather than a method. John Hodder is 
properly careful to point this out when accused of 
preaching socialism, just as Jesus was very careful to 
do a similar thing when his enemies asked him whether 
the Jews should submit to the Roman theory of gov- 
ernment of not. He said : "Render unto Caesar the 
things that are Caesar's and unto God the things that 
are God's.'' He meant that his followers should be 
obedient to their government, but also loyal to their 
conscience. This left them room to work out another 
form of government if it was in conflict with their 
conscience. And they did, and have been doing so 
all down the Christian centuries. Communism was 
the earliest form of government among Christians; 
but it did not last, because it was discovered to be 
unsatisfactory. Competition became the next form, 
and it is bound to pass away because also unsatisfac- 
tory. Co-operation is the coming form, and will have 
in it something of socialism and something of individ- 
ualism, but will not be all of one or all of the other. 
But no matter what the form of government existing 
or advocated may be, it can never be properly called a 
Christian form of government unless the people under 
it are filled with the spirit of Christ. Christianity is a 
spiritual force in people rather than a form of state. 
So, again, there are theories as to theology, which 
have always claimed the allegiance and championship 
of Christian thinkers. From the days of Paul down 
to the present hour there have been all kinds of spec- 
ulations about God and Jesus, the soul and the here- 
after. These speculations have been shaped into creeds 
and upon these creeds denominations have been 



WHAT, THEN, IS CHRISTIANITY? 97 

founded, and men have said: ''If you do not accept 
our particular theories and our particular creed and 
our particular church you are not a Christian." How 
absurd and how utterly antagonistic to the expressed 
teaching of Jesus in such matters! Did he not say to 
the very same type of people in his own time: "Not 
everyone that saith unto me Lord, Lord, shall enter 
the kingdom of heaven ; but he that doeth the will of 
my Father which is in heaven." He meant, and his 
hearers knew that he meant, that it did not follow be- 
cause a man accepted one system of theology instead 
of another, that he was acceptable to God. The test 
was something far deeper and far better than that. 
Theological theories just like speculations in other 
branches of science, come and go; they change with 
the changing knowledge and the development of man, 
and to make theology and Christianity one and the 
same would be to make Christianity an ever changing 
thing when, as a matter of fact, it is the most perma- 
nent thing in the universe. When you once know 
what Christianity is, you will always know what it is. 
When you find it truly in America you will find it to be 
the same thing in Europe, Asia and Africa. 

Christianity, instead of being a religion of theories 
and creeds, is a religon of principles and deeds. When 
we bear this in mind we have the key to our religion. 

I say, first, that Christianity is a religion of princi- 
ples. It represents the determined purpose of God to 
make men govern themselves in all things, not by 
rules but by great generalizations. Authority in re- 
ligion lost its grip the moment Christ appeared. He 
taught his disciples to call no man master and to get 
their religion from no outside source. They were not 
to think that the only place where they could worship 
was on Mt. Gerizim or on Mt. Zion. God was a spirit, 
and they that worshipped him must worship him in 
spirit and could therefore worship him wherever they 
pleased. I said that authority in religion lost its grip 
when Christ appeared. I should have said that Christ 
loosened the grip of ecclesiastical authority when he 



98 WHAT, THE:n, is CHRISTIANITY? 

came, and it has been growing weaker every advanc- 
ing year. There are churches which still maintain that 
they hold the power of heaven and hell over men, but 
only the ignorant or very pious believe it. Universal 
education is destroying their pretensions and will ulti- 
mately relegate them to the scrap heap of other out- 
grown tyrannies. Jesus knew all this when he 
founded Christianity, for he turned away from the 
ecclesiastical tyrants of his nation with their do this 
and do that and their long list of penalties to the indi- 
vidual, and bade him rule himself and work out his 
own salvation. 

And these are the principles he laid down for man's 
guidance, which makes them the fundamental princi- 
ples of Christianity. 

First, freedom. ''Ye shall know the truth and the 
truth shall make you free.'' Not, somebody else shall 
know the truth for you! Not that you shall sit in a 
pew and hear a priest speaking in Latin or Greek or 
some other language you cannot understand, but must 
accept because it is a priest speaking. But that you 
shall do your own thinking and keep on doing your 
own thinking until you shall know what is true and 
good in religion as in every other department of your 
life. Christianity, then, is the religion of free men; 
the men who have learned the value of hard thinking 
as distinguished from the soft kind, the men who know 
they have a right to find their own denomination and 
attend any church they please, their only quest being 
that of spiritual enrichment and moral incentive. 

Second, honesty. Did not Jesus says: "For this 
purpose was I born and for this cause came I unto the 
world, that I might bear witness as to the truth." It 
was like saying to Pilate, who had the power of life 
or death in his hands : "I cannot help what becomes 
of me, but I can help repudiating my honest convic- 
tions. Send me to the cross if you will, but you cannot 
buy or gag my conscience." Christianity, then, is the 
religion of honest men. John Hodder had the spirit 
when he told his congregation and his vestry exactly 



WHAT, THEN, IS CHRISTIANITY? 99 

what his religious views were after his eyes had been 
opened. And he was prepared to stand the conse- 
quences. I have always rated Abraham Lincoln as 
one of the most perfect examples of a Christian of 
modern times on account of his sterling honesty. 
Speaking out there at Freeport, Illinois, when his 
friends told him not to utter certain sentiments be- 
cause to do so would mean his political ruin, he said : 
^'Friends, this question has been delayed long enough, 
and if I am to go down with it, let me go down linked 
with the truth.'' 

Third, fearlessness. When you get the spirit of 
freedom and honesty in a man you get fearlessness. 
Did not the Founder of our Religion walk straight up 
to the scribes and Pharisees of his time and say: 
*'Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for 
ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and 
when he has become so, ye make him twofold more a 
son of hell than yourselves. Woe unto you, ye blind 
guides . . . for ye make clean the outside of the 
cup and the platter, but within they are full from ex- 
tortion and excess . . . How can you escape the 
damnation of Gehenna.'' Pretty vigorous language in 
those days and under such circumstances, but you 
couldn't frighten Jesus of Nazareth when he knew he 
was right. Nor have they been able to frighten his 
true followers. The most fearless men and women on 
the top of this earth should be our Christian men and 
women. 

Fourth, mercy. Freedom, honesty and fearlessness 
are vigorous principles and make the Christian a vig- 
orous type of character. But this is not all there is to 
this religion of Jesus. Pity and mercy dripped from 
his fingers like honey. The beauty and glory of 
Christianity is that it touches the mystic chords of 
affection in every human breast. Did not Christ in- 
clude among his beatitudes : ''Blessed are the merciful 
for they shall obtain mercy" ? Christianity is thus the 
religion of merciful men. His followers see the chil- 
dren as he saw them and take them to their heart as 



100 WHAT, THDN, IS CHRISTIANITY? 

he took them to his heart. They see the sinful, the 
outcast, the weak, and they know that in giving unto 
them, even a drink of cold water in the name of a 
disciple, is giving it unto Christ. John Hodder never 
knew much about the merciful side of Christianity 
until he met Horace Bentley and saw the way in which 
every Kate Marcy of the street and every Mrs. Garvin 
of poverty and despair was received into his home and 
treated with love. But it had always been in Christ's 
religion, and is there to-day as never before. It is as 
Lowell says in his poem, ''The Forlorn'' : ''Whom the 
heart of man shuts out, the heart of Christ takes in." 

Fifth, broad vision, or, as it is commonly called in 
the church, faith. Jesus was the broadest-visioned 
man in all history. He looked upon the evil in the 
world and he foresaw its utter annihilation, exclaim- 
ing: "I beheld Satan like lightning fallen from 
heaven." He had the same vision in that age that 
Wagner had in ours when he pictured Klingsor, repre- 
sentative of the incarnated evil of this world, utterly 
destroyed by Parsifal, representative of the incarnated 
good of the world. Jesus also looked upon the men, 
women and children of the universe and saw them in 
all stages of perfection and imperfection, intelligence 
and ignorance, virtue and sinfulness ; but he saw them 
coming up, ever coming up, and in his mighty confi- 
dence in their ability to finally and completely rise and 
reach his own perfection of manhood, he cried: "I 
will draw all men unto me." Christianity, friends, 
is the religion of broad-visioned men ; a vision so vast 
that it includes the whole human race and a faith so 
perfect that it contemplates the final harmony of all 
souls with God. 

These are the five basic principles of this wonderful 
religion of the Nazarene: Freedom, honesty, fear- 
lessness, mercy or love, broad vision or faith. These 
form the motive power of a true Christian life. They 
are the dynamos that verily make the Christian the 
light of the world. 

But this is not all there is to Christianity. It is 



WHAT, THEN, IS CHRISTIANITY? 101 

also a religion of works. That is why Paul said: 
'*Faith without works is dead." Christianity is the 
supreme and final effort of God to make this world 
ethically religious. Age upon age, land after land, 
man has only been ceremonially religious. In our 
colleges, so long as the students go to chapel a certain 
number of times per year, they will get the passing 
mark. So it is with the wrong type of Christianity, — 
so long as believers go a certain number of times to a 
certain church, accept the creed, observe the sacra- 
ments and other rites and ceremonies, they are given 
the passing mark for heaven! Jesus was disgusted 
with such religion; with those who sat in Moses' 
seat and told the people what to do but did not do it 
themselves ; with religious people who went to church 
to worship God and came away to war upon man. He 
warned his disciples not to be like them, and com- 
manded them to let their light so shine before men 
that they would see their good works, and because 
of their splendid deeds glorify their Father in heaven. 
Christianity, therefore, while having Christians hold 
great principles, would also have them put those prin- 
ciples into daily practise, both in their individual life 
and their life as members of a great human common- 
wealth. 

This principle of freedom means that every fol- 
lower of Christ is to strike for and fight for the lib- 
erty of man, woman and child all along the line. 
Christianity is against every form of *'ocracy" except 
democracy. It is, in truth, the religion of democracy, 
and wherever it has gone and has been strong enough 
to hurl the priests into the background, it has set the 
people free. Although Thomas Paine was not ac- 
counted a Christian in his day, he nevertheless had 
the creed of a Christian: ''Man is my brother. 
Woman is my sister. The world is my country. To 
do good is my religion." 

This principle of honesty means that we are to 
exalt integrity in every walk of life and make it the 
foundation of business and statecraft as well as the 



102 WHAT, THE)N, IS CHRISTIANITY? 

church and the home. The reborn business man will 
evidence his rebirth by hewing more and more to the 
line of honor in all that he makes or sells. It will 
mean a hard fight as the business world is now consti- 
tuted, but he is ready to make it, knowing as he does 
that it must be a winning fight. ''For right is right, 
since God is God and right the day must win ; to doubt 
would be disloyalty; to falter would be sin." Those 
splendid Christians who began the fight for honor in 
the home in the degenerate days of Roman bestiality, 
when few women were pure and most men were lib- 
ertines, and home was nothing but a stall in which to 
eat and sleep, fought a great fight. It has taken cen- 
turies to win it, but to-day the Christian home is the 
ideal home of all the world. It will take years to 
establish the same code of honor in business and the 
state, but it can be done ; and is being steadily accom- 
plished by those who have the Christian will and are 
making the Christian way. 

Such a principle as fearlessness commands us, 
preachers and laymen alike, to reconstruct the theology 
and practise of every denomination and church in 
Christendom and bring them on to the basis of modern 
thought, inductive science and social service, before 
it is too late. What matter who of us are sacrificed 
in the struggle ? Was not the Master put to death for 
doing a similar thing in an age when he knew that if 
he did not alter Judaism and its synagogues there 
would be no pure and powerful religion to go up 
against the pagan world, fast rotting to ruin and fast 
carrying the whole human race down to destruction? 
Read "Quo Vadis" or "The Sign of the Cross," and 
you will see the problem that Jesus foresaw ; the awful 
peril that he started in to avert when he sent a little 
band of holy men and women forth to preach the gos- 
pel of pure and faithful living to all the world. His 
blood and the blood of the Christian martyrs was all 
that saved Rome and the human race. Your fearless- 
ness and mine and that of others who will join us in 
this great modern attempt to revitalize the church is 



WHAT, THKN, IS CHRISTIANITY? 103 

all that can save the church, and through the church 
arrest this human race we love from dancing itself 
and amusing itself and selling itself back into barbar- 
ism and bestiality. The inside of the cup must be 
cleansed before the outside of the cup can show the 
signs of the complete cleansing every serious-minded 
man wants it to show. 

Does someone rise up and say, as someone always 
does : "But we ought to go slow in altering religious 
doctrines." Let me ask you, friend, does the scientist 
go slow in changing scientific doctrines? Why, if he 
discovers a new truth this minute, what cares he for 
the old error it displaces. It is his joy to pounce upon 
new truths and apply them, and it is our physical sal- 
vation to have him do so. We were told that all can- 
cers could not be cured ; but a new discovery has been 
made, and now we are assured that they can. Won- 
derful news, glorious news ! Do we hold back because 
it is a new discovery? So the progressive Christian 
believes that every cancer of modern civilization can 
be cured if Christianity will only rediscover and reuse 
the powers that were perfectly plain to the early 
Christians who made a brave attempt to cure the 
cancers of Roman civilization. But the church must 
wake up and go to it with modern thought and mod- 
ern equipment. 

And the principle of mercy starts us straight for 
the enemies of mankind. They must be put out of 
business. Pouring mercy on the wounds of the world 
is like spraying perfume on a cancer : it may sweeten 
it for a time, but back it will come in all its ghastliness 
and foulness. I know of no mercy so merciful as 
killing off by governmental means those who are their 
own foes as well as the foes of humanity. Do not 
point to church settlements and associated charities 
with pride, my Christian friend, as if they reflected 
credit on Christianity: they reflect discredit because 
they show that Christianity is not working. They are 
like ambulances which gather up the wounded while 
the awful war goes raging on. If this religion of ours 



104 WHAT, THEN, IS CHRISTIANITY? 

and these churches of ours and the people of ours 
would go after the root causes of poverty, vice, crime, 
drunkenness, ignorance and cruelty and extirpate them, 
there would be no need of church settlements or 
bureaus of charities or prison reform associations and 
this long, pathetic list of ambulance-like organizations. 
In mercy's name get after the cripplers, the debauch- 
ers, the impoverishers, the wreckers of men, women 
and children. Start there and the rest will be easy. 

But at the same time, mercy points the Christian to 
the victims of man's inhumanity to man and man's 
inhumanity to himself, and sends him as a big brother 
or sends her as a good sister to bend over the wretched 
one and lift. If ''The Inside of the Cup" had done 
nothing more than give us the sight of Horace Bentley 
standing by the sobbing Kate Marcy and the agonizing 
Mrs. Garvin and seeing them through their shame and 
grief we would always remember it with gratitude 
for having shown us our Christian privilege of some- 
where on life's hard road and in the midst of this piti- 
less civilization of being 

To other souls. 

The cup of strength in some great agony; 

The enkindler of generous ardor, the feeder of pure love 

And the begetter of the smiles that have no cruelty. 

And, then, this principle of broad vision or faith 
should inspire us to build for the greatest and grandest 
conceivable future of mankind. The Christian is not 
to be satisfied with saving some of the world; he 
should yearn to save all the world. The Christian 
must not give way to the pessimism, always flying in 
the air, that it is possible to do for some and impossi- 
ble to do for others. This is an age in which there 
should be no skepticism as to what can be done for 
man, any more than there is a lingering remnant of 
doubt as to what can be done by man since he has 
conquered the earth and the sea and the very air! 
Just begin right ; begin with the children of to-day, and 
as sure as harvest time follows seed time, will the 



WHAT, THEN, IS CHRISTIANITY? 105 

future men and women of this earth be Christ-like 
men and women. All honor to the business association 
which is placing posters on the billboards of our 
cities that are to appeal to children — those at Christ- 
mas time depicting the birth of Jesus and telling the 
children to ask their parents to tell them the story ; at 
other times depicting the several childhood steps in 
the rise of Grant, Lincoln, Washington and other 
Americans to greatness, and again telling them to have 
their parents explain the pictures. This will be 
foundation work for multitudes of children, who 
would never get such knowledge and incentive in any 
other way. The foundation stones we lay in the souls 
of children will determine the superstructure of com- 
ing society. All success, too, to those who want to 
open every public school to the young after school 
hours for recreation, amusement and other benefits, 
thus keeping them out of bad company and away from 
men who entertain them to make money out of them, 
no matter what becomes of their morals and manners 
afterwards. When Jesus took the children in his arms 
and said: ''Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven," he 
said everything, the last word on the secret of having, 
one of these glad days, a genuine Christian country on 
this North American continent, a genuine Christian 
world on this swinging, singing globe. 

This, then, is Christianity — this is the religion of 
Jesus Christ as he taught it and practised it; the re- 
birth of every soul into a spiritual attitude to life, with 
a deep determination to rest not until the kingdoms 
of this world are the kingdoms of our God. This is 
the kind of Christianity we find exemplified by Horace 
Bentley, John Hodder and Alison Parr, in contrast to 
Eldon Parr, Wallis Plimpton and Gordon Atterbury. 
It is a complete program of life, and oflFers all men the 
choice between God and Mammon; a life of service 
and a life of self ; a future of usefulness and satisfac- 
tion and a future of uselessness and regret. I ask 
you, as you lay down this little volume, to measure 
up to your Christianity, to accept this challenge of the 



106 WHAT, TH^N, IS CHRISTIANITY? 

Christ, to commit yourself body, soul and will to this 
religion of the reborn! 

Thinking of Christ, and hearing what men say 
Anent his second coming some near day, 
Unto the me of me, I turned to ask, 
What can we do for Him, and by what task. 
Or through what sacrifice, can we proclaim 
Our mighty love, and glorify His name? 

Not by long prayers, though prayers renew our grace — 
Not by tall spires, though steeples have their place — 
Not by our faith, though faith is glorious — 
Can we prove Christ, but hy the love in us. 
Mercy and love and kindness — seek these three. 
Thus (thinking of Christ) myself said unto me. 



MODBBN PBINTING COMPANY 

653 Bboad Street 
Newark, N. J. 



n^ 



